[Mixology]

Greetings,

This is my first thread on this forum, so, please forgive me if I sound a bit ignorant.

I came to this forum because I am having difficulty finding what I need. I'm a professional audio engineer. My area of expertise is sound design for feature films. I have a lot of experience in creating the sound mixes that go on the DVDs that I see mentioned frequently in this forum. I am putting together a studio for my own use where I hope to combine my professional expertise and equipment with consumer products for video and surround playback. I have had no problem at all outfitting the studio with professional monitors and tri-amped powered speakers. My mixing environment can support 10.2 surround mixing. But I have come across a puzzling issue when it comes to buying consumer playback equipment.

The first thing that surprised me was the almost complete lack of DVD or Blue Ray players with built in surround decoding. I have searched high and low and the only one I've found with any merit is the Denon 1940CI.

My second surprise came as I tried to comprehend my first surprise. I assumed if there were no players with built in decoders there surely must be dozens of stand alone decoders... no? Well, apparently... no, there are very few of those either. In fact, I've yet to find one other than the professional one from Dolby.

My last surprise... at least for now... is how non uniform the adaptation of HDMI has been. In the professional audio world when a multichannel format is introduced everyone tries to cram it full of functionality well beyond it's design. With HDMI however, no one seems to be taking advantage of more than about half of the capability designed in the format.

I have been forced to a sad conclusion that when it comes to surround audio, the consumer market place is a very disconnected environment. More full of hyperbole than critical substance and even less when it comes to flexibility of hardware.

Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so!

So, now you know why I'm here. Here's what I'm trying to do... I want to feed as many as 4 HD video signals to my new Sony Bravia KDL 52XBR4 LCD TV. Each source provides a 5.1 surround audio signal but encoded in either SPDIF COAX or TOSLINK Optical... BTW, all of these devices offer HDMI but none of them provide enough information to know if 5.1 audio is supported or not! The biggest problem here is the 5.1 decoding is most commonly done in a receiver which then outputs amplified "Speaker Level" signal.

I guess what I'm looking for if I can't reliably do this in HDMI, is a COAX switcher... 4 in 1 out. Of course it would have to be SPDIF 110 ohm compliant to pass digital audio... And if I can't find a stand alone decoder I guess I need a receiver with line outputs for L, C, R, Ls, Rs, & LFE. So, does any one know where I can find these things? Or does anyone have a better idea?

Thanks for taking the time to read through my rant,
JL

[John Dirk]

Welcome to the forum!

I feel a bit tentative addressing someone who appears to know more about audio than I ever will, but as far as I know, you have no real problem because, by definition HDMI supports formats up to DD True HD and DTS core. DD 5.1 is certainly supported in any contenporary HDMI implimentation.

While I don't have any specifics, I do know there are a few DVD players out there that offer onboard decoding of matrixed audio. Others here can provide more information on this topic.

John

[Phil A]

If you're looking for a coax switcher, a composite video switcher will work fine and they are abundant and not expensive.

[Stephen Tu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mixology

The first thing that surprised me was the almost complete lack of DVD or Blue Ray players with built in surround decoding. I have searched high and low and the only one I've found with any merit is the Denon 1940CI.

My second surprise came as I tried to comprehend my first surprise. I assumed if there were no players with built in decoders there surely must be dozens of stand alone decoders... no? Well, apparently... no, there are very few of those either. In fact, I've yet to find one other than the professional one from Dolby.

Most consumers interested in multi-channel surround use AV receivers or HTIB solutions. These all have decoders built-in, so there's no demand for redundant standalone decoders, so not surprisingly you can't find them anymore. These used to be around 11 years ago when Dolby Digital was first coming out, and there were receivers with only analog multi-ch ins released w/o any built-in decoding, but after awhile they were dropped as everything became built-in. Early DVD players often had decoders (& DVD-A/SACD universal models still do), but they are dropped on the cheaper models now since there is next to zero margin left in std DVD players and most people wouldn't need them. I don't see why this should be at all surprising to you.

As for Blu-ray, there are lots of players w/ built-in decoding for most of the audio formats, it's only hard to find decoding for DTS-HD/MA which will come out in players later this year. Though I don't know what constitutes "merit" for you.

Quote:

to pass digital audio... And if I can't find a stand alone decoder I guess I need a receiver with line outputs for L, C, R, Ls, Rs, & LFE. So, does any one know where I can find these things? Or does anyone have a better idea?

There are a zillion receivers with analog line-level preamp-outs. Just look at the more expensive $450+ models from Onkyo, Yamaha, Denon, etc., rather than the cheaper < $400 models.