Disappearing Digital Audio Inputs on Receivers (1 Viewer)

[rfeigels]

I have a Pioneer receiver with two optical and two digital coaxial audio inputs. I need to replace the receiver, but it appears most audio receivers now only have one of each. Unfortunately I have a couple of devices that only have optical outputs and need to use two digital coaxial. So I'm not clear how I'm going to do this upgrade. One obvious answer is to run the HDMI cables to the receiver and then a single HDMI out to the TV, but I've always avoided having the video signal do anything but go direct to the TV. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily cautious. Any ideas?

 

[JohnRice]

They do tend to have more hdmi and fewer other digital inputs. I looked at Denon and most if not all seem to have 2 optical and 1 coaxial up to about $1K retail, where you get two of both. So you might just have to look at more expensive receivers.

If you need two coax, there are inexpensive converters than accept a coax input and output optical, so you can use a cheaper receiver with one coax and two optical inputs.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

One obvious answer is to run the HDMI cables to the receiver and then a single HDMI out to the TV, but I've always avoided having the video signal do anything but go direct to the TV. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily cautious. Any ideas?

It's the obvious answer because it's the correct answer. Any new receiver you purchase should be able to pass through 4K video with HDR10 or Dolby Vision without any issue -- as long as you use certified premium high speed HDMI cables (the certification is very important). This type of cable does not need to be expensive, either. Monoprice cables are very inexpensive and meet this certification -- a 6 foot cable is about $7.

I have seven source components in my main setup, and am only using a single toslink digital optical cable in the system -- every other component is connected via HDMI only. The back of the receiver sure looks a lot cleaner than in the old days when I had a bunch of analog audio and video connections! My only optical digital connection is the audio from my 4K display back to the Denon X3300W receiver. The only reason I even needed that was because I couldn't get ARC (audio return channel) to work properly between the display and receiver. ARC can be quite buggy.

 

[JohnRice]

One obvious answer is to run the HDMI cables to the receiver and then a single HDMI out to the TV, but I've always avoided having the video signal do anything but go direct to the TV. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily cautious. Any ideas?

How did I miss that? Scanning the post too quickly. To summarize Scott's response, Yes that is exactly how you should do it. The reason NOT to do it the way you are currently doing it are numerous. The receiver is intended to do the switching for the entire system.