Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

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RE: It depends

Posted by cfraser on April 13, 2009 at 10:19:17:
I would not even bother using analog cables to any AVR, mostly a waste of time IME. It's not what AVRs do best. Keep it digital/HDMI, so much easier. Now, if you had a good pre-pro that keeps a quality analog input in the analog domain, that's a different matter. As others said, it's mostly how good the gear is *after* the player output, whether analog or digital, that will be the main sonic difference.

I haven't seen any convincing (to me) evidence that a fancy HDMI cable improves the audio, when talking 3m or less. As usual, use a cable of quality you're comfortable with. I just use the cheapest Audioquest ones now as I can't tell any diff, and in fact the dirt-cheap Monoprice one I have seems just as good functionally but I like the AQ one's construction better.

One thing that is a bit "strange" about using HDMI for audio is that the bandwidth allocated for audio is set as a proportion of that used for video. So, if you want 7.1 lossless audio over HDMI, you have to make sure that the player is set for a high video rate. This typically only might be a problem if using a less-capable display while you're listening, because otherwise you'd just set the player to the highest video output rate (1080p) and not care what the picture is. It does matter for music on video discs though, since usually you need the display, and your display capability may not allow the audio rate you want over HDMI. Just something to watch out for, because the audio over HDMI can be automatically "degraded" without you being told...