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Newbie Setting up Receiver

1K views 8 replies 3 participants last post by  glaufman 
#1 ·
I know this is a complete noob questions but I guess that makes since because I just got my surround sound yesterday. I have a Onkyo HT-s5200 7.1 system with three components (Sat, PS3, Xbox360). I have all components going into the receiver via HDMI. Since it is a HDMI pass through receiver I then have the receiver going to the tv via 1 HDMI. From there I have an optical out of my tv to the receiver. I am getting sound for all three compentents.

My question is, since I don't have an optical/coax from each compenent to the receiver independently, am I getting the most out of my system? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
#3 ·
So to make sure I understand this correctly, the audio signal coming in through the hdmi is better quality than the audio signal coming in through an optical cable from the same component? And then the signal from the hdmi is carried to the tv then on through the optical out to the receiver? That may make no sense at all, lol. Just trying to understand...
 
#4 ·
HDMI can carry Dolby plus/TrueHD. These are the latest surround sound formats. They cannot be carried via optical/coax digital.

To complicate matters further, the output coming from your TV is limited to stereo for everything it outputs except the built-in digital tuner. If you tune a channel with surround sound, it is output in Dolby Digital 5.1 over the optical. however, if you connect a blu-ray player to your TV via HDMI and then your TV via HDMI to your AVR, the optical carries only stereo, not surround. This is not a technological limitation, but a limitation placed by the copyright holders.
 
#7 ·
I actually believe this is more of a preference question...
IF your AVR would take the audio from the HDMI cables, that would be the best quality, hands down.
But, IF your AVR cannot, then you are making a tradeoff: You could run the spdifs (optical or coaxial) from each componenet to the AVR. This would give you discrete multichannel operation, but with a lossy compression. Or you could do what you're doing and run the spdif from the TV, whichmay not use the lossy compression, and there be higher "quality" like Marshall says, BUT you lose the multich dimension. You can regain some of that with Dolby Prologic series of decoders in the AVR, but it's not the same.

So to me it's ultimately, which is more important to you... run the taste test and see which way you prefer.
 
#8 ·
Greg is right, I should have done more research. Your 5200 does not take audio from the HDMI channels, it's simply acting as an HDMI switch. In other words, even though all your components are connected to the receiver via HDMI, if you were to remove the optical connection from the TV to the AVR, you'd lose all audio.

Therefore, it's 90% certain to give you better sound to connect each component to the AVR using either optical or coax digital.

I can't wait for the day that every soundsystem with an HDMI will actually use HDMI as a sound input and process Dolby TrueHD.
 
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