Best Audio Hookup for Blu-Ray player to non-HDMI receiver.?

6 Responses to “Best Audio Hookup for Blu-Ray player to non-HDMI receiver.?”

1. Dustin says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   Keeping to the topic of non-HDMI, the short answer to your question is that TOSLINK / optical digital is the hands-down best option for digital audio bitstream connection between a playback device and a receiver, so something else is the cause.

   There are so many options in just about any model receiver that there’s a good chance there’s a setting that needs to be configured.

   Either there’s a setting causing center / dialog to be too loud causing it to distort / clip, something is causing it to be buried in music & effects coming from the other speakers (center / dialog too low), or maybe the mix of whatever disc you’re trying to play just wasn’t done well. if it happens with every disc then it’s definitely a receiver setting if your Dish plays fine. If it’s simply a difference in playback level then it could be a gain structure and / or headroom issue difference between the two signal paths.

   One *must* consider the connection quality of optical versus copper wire (which I went into in another post, basically saying that optical is not vulnerable to interference, whereas copper wire / analog (as well as copper digital / SPDIF) is).

   Digital, be it AC-3 or DTS at the high bitrate it’s recorded at is virtually imperceptible to differences between the PCM or analog master, and the benefit of no hum or buzz from optical far outweighs the .00001% of people who’s ears are sharp enough to distinguish the differences in AC-3 & DTS encoding versus analog in a true studio environment, which is (practically) the only environment one would be able to hear an analog signal clean enough to be able to make a valid comparison. Studios don’t seek out ways to replace all their new equipment with "high quality analog" cables.

   It may be convenient to refer to analog as "lossless", but you must also consider line loss, quality of analog cable (there’s virtually no such thing as an analog cable that *really* passes a signal without changing it in some way), and many other factors that are a non-issue with an optical digital connection.

   The other topic is located here:
   http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ambm2XJk9M4MmnvZB1gMS27sy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090531134317AAKnjPo&show=7#profile-info-AA11724410
2. Mr. water says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   I concur with the above post, unless your willing to dish out for a serious set of analogue audio cables, optical is your best bet and a Denon reciever should convert it better than most BR players anyways. The problem might be that you prefer the significantly more compressed sound of the Satelite TV, which can be interpreted as crisp by some listeners. I would suggest fiddleing with the audio preferences on the Denon, perhaps setting it to a preset that gives you more desirable audio.
3. Bytefield says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   Blu-ray supports new lossless compression audio formats like Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio. The S/PDIF digital format used by optical cable doesn’t support these formats, so your receiver is probably getting only two channels, not 5.1.

   The bitstream (audiophile) format you selected can only be carried fully over an HDMI cable. If you select bitstream (re-encode) instead, I think you’ll find the audio improves dramatically.

   But if you want the best quality sound, yes, you should switch to an analog cable. Buy a 6 x male RCA and connect the player’s analog outputs to your receiver’s EXT IN inputs. Here’s one:

   http://www.araccessories.com/araccessories/ARAccessoriesProductDetail.do?ACTION_TYPE_ID=ACTION_TYPE_PRODUCT_DETAIL&ACTION_CATEGORY_IDnull&ACTION_PRODUCT_ID=AP036

   You can find this cable or an equivalent one for about $15-20 if you shop around.

   I have an older Yamaha receiver and that’s how I have my Samsung Blu-ray player (BD-P2500) connected, the lossless audio sounds fantastic.
4. Peter D says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   I have nothing more to offer beyond what the first two guys said. I just had to post to let you know the person above me seems to be confused.

   You can send 5.1 over optical when you send it bitstream (as you’re doing). It’s when you send it PCM that it downgrades to two channels. And even if you tried to send the 7.1 HD audio (TrueHD and DTS-HD MA) bitstream it would downgrade to the core 5.1 soundtracks.
5. bbt91945 says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   Check you Blue ray disc player to see if there is an adjustement for uotput like HDMI, Optical etc. and see if that helps. Optical is your best hook up for digital, you can try the analog cable (also need to check the manual for hook up of analog setting on the disc player). Or you can upgrade your receiver with one that has HDMI.
6. Wombat says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   I don’t know why it wouldn’t sound as good, but it’s possible that the Dish network is "sweetening" the audio with compression and equalization to make it sound better on typical TVs. Or maybe it’s just Dolby Surround which is really 2 channels.

   Anyway, you can only get lossy 5.1 surround through the optical cable, as in regular Dolby Digital or DTS. Or two channel lossless audio, which could be Dolby Prologic Surround.

   The best solution is to use the 5.1 RCA jack outputs on the Blu-ray player, if it has them, and run those to the 5.1 inputs on your receiver. That should get you the full lossless audio quality.