Passing audio to TV? (1 Viewer)

I'm a newbie (sorry) and cross-shopping the Denon AVR 2803, Onkyo TX-SR800, and Harman Kardon AVR 525. Believe it or not, with my satellite, Xbox, and DVDs, sometimes I would prefer to listen to the audio through the TV set (late at night, wife asleep, etc...) rather than booming out of my receiver. Does anyone know whether I can pass through an audio signal from the receiver to the TV so that I can optionally turn down the receiver volume when necessary? I'm thinking that I should be able to connect the signal from the pre-amp outputs (left and right channel only) of any of these to the TV so that the pre-amp is always outputting to the TV audio signals from whatever video component is selected with the receiver. Or perhaps connect the audio output from one of the VCR inputs on the receiver to the TV to get the same effect? Can anyone help me out with some advice here?

You can do this, but you don't want to use the pre-outs. For starters, there generally is no way to mute the speakers without also muting the pre-outs.

You would instead hook one of the tape out jacks to an audio input on your TV. However, if you do this, you probably want to make sure you do not hook the audio output of your TV up to an input on your receiver. If you did, it would be easy to accidentally create a feedback loop.

I'm not sure your original premise will quite work the way you expect, though. Your receiver can play just as softly as your TV, and may even allow for greater flexibility with dynamic volume compression, not to mention headphones. I used to have my setup hooked up as you describe, but the only thing I ever used it for was to do A-B comparisons to show how much better the sound was using my receiver instead of my TV. Got old after a bit.

Thanks for the advice Marc.

Why not get a pair of wireless headphones? I find they are the best solution for this problem. Not only that, but you can still listen at loud volume...some even have simulated surround!

One thing to note about using the Tape-Outs - some receivers may not have the tape-outs enabled if a digital source is playing. This varies quite a bit in the different brands. It'd pay to check it out though. My advice is to just turn the volume down on the receiver.