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ldfan
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Post subject: Re: Optical audio and coaxial video vs rca - D703 Posted: 15 Dec 2018, 08:13 |
Hardcore fan |
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Joined: 28 Jun 2014, 05:59 Posts: 1462 Location: San Francisco, CA USA Has thanked: 426 times Been thanked: 537 times
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dbbarney wrote: Oops, I guess the optical or coaxial are both audio. Is one better than the other for audio over using the L/R rca jack?
Optical and Coaxial are basically the same in that they are defined as S/PDIF outputs (Sony / Philips Digital Interface) that deliver digital data. When they were first invented, they carried PCM digital audio data from CD players as an option to use an outboard D/A converter for improved sound quality. As time went on, the S/PDIF standard added bitstream data capabilites for Dolby Digital (but not on LD as it's encoded differently) and DTS. As for whether optical or coaxial is better or worse, these days they are basically the same now. However, back in the day, there was a preference by some for using coaxial digital because they supposedly had less "jitter" than optical that caused timing errors that muddied the sound (since that time, optical as well as coaxial has improved w/ jitter reducing circuitry to reduce the errors). In addition, the reason that some preferred optical over coaxial was the reduction of possible GND loop noise as the optical cable did not require grounding like a coax cable would. Finally, would using the optical/coaxial digital out be better or worse than using L/R outputs directly? Well, that depends on what machine has the better D/A converter (the D/A converter in the player that feeds the L/R output or the D/A converter being fed a digital connection from the player and decoded back to analog outside of the player). In most cases, you should get better sound using the digital output since in most cases you would be sending it to a better D/A converter. However, that may not always be the case due to subjective perceptions of how we like the sound of a particular device. For example, I have a Pioneer, CLD-3030 that utilizes a 4x oversampling, 16 bit dual D/A converters (one for each channel). I personally think this player has a warmer sound w/ tighter bass coming out of the L/R output vs. listening to the sound on the optical out and having my Denon AV Receiver decode the audio. It doesn't mean that either sounds worse or better; it just sounds different. In addition, I will say that later Pioneer LD players starting from the CLD-3090 sound worse on their built in D/A converters since that was the time many companies were trying to reduce the cost of multi bit converters and switching to 1bit DLC which was much cheaper to produce. Thus, I prefer to usually listen to these players on the digital out and using a modern day AV Receiver to decode the audio. So I guess that's it. No real easy answer but hope you understand it better now.
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signofzeta
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Post subject: Re: Optical audio and coaxial video vs rca - D703 Posted: 15 Dec 2018, 21:36 |
Jedi Knight |
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Joined: 14 Jan 2010, 09:44 Posts: 6003 Location: Ann Arbor Has thanked: 1300 times Been thanked: 1114 times
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takeshi666 wrote: It'd be silly if they did.
Although I've been curious about something. I've seen a lot of receivers provide multiple audio inputs under the same label, ie. something like RCA L/R, digital coaxial AND optical all under "DVD" which presumably means that changing the receiver to that input will simply receive all of them. Since I would imagine it'd be a bit of a mess if it tried to output the sound from all the sources at the same time, is it up to the source itself then? My player has RCA out only, but if I had digital out as well, how does it determine which output it's using? On my Harmon Kardon you can set the input source separately from the video source so you can have any audio input on any source. You can do this manually or you can have it auto poll with a preference for digital. I do it manually because the logic of why I may want one input or another is never going to make sense to a robot but basically if Video 1 is an LD player you use that input’s analog inputs plus Coax 1 or Optical 1. Then if you put in Speed it will pick the digital out. If you put in Discovison Jaws there is no digital so it will switch to the analog. The problem is that if you want to hear commentary or whatever on the analogs and that disc has digital sound it won’t let you use the analog until you turn off the auto polling so I just leave it off.
_________________ All about LD care, inner sleeves, shrink wrap, etc.
https://youtu.be/b3O-vHpHRpM
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ldfan
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Post subject: Re: Optical audio and coaxial video vs rca - D703 Posted: 16 Dec 2018, 07:22 |
Hardcore fan |
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Joined: 28 Jun 2014, 05:59 Posts: 1462 Location: San Francisco, CA USA Has thanked: 426 times Been thanked: 537 times
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rein-o wrote: Possibly but the older one that I had you could select Analog or Digital for the audio, I don't believe it gave both only one option but you had to select or there was an automatic setting but for LD that didn't work out. If we're talking about AV Receivers that use to incorporate an AC3-RF input, most of them were designed to work w/ auto switching on three sets of audio connections on the LD input (AC3-RF, S/PDIF digital, and analog). My old Sony, STR-DE915 would work in this fashion flawlessly and really made input switching very easy. Unfortunately, FF to today and the feature is now limited to auto switching between one analog and one digital input because there is no need for switching two digital inputs since all current source components can output all the different audio codecs through a single digital connection (wouldn’t be surprised that we lose analog inputs on future AV Receivers as we move further anyway from analog sources). As for trying to make it easier today to switch different audio inputs for LD playback, my current solution as I documented here..... Dual LD player Home Theater with PCM, AC3, & DTS capability..... works great for me.
Last edited by ldfan on 19 Mar 2019, 04:54, edited 1 time in total.
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