PCM and DVD Audio (1 Viewer)

[Doug Smith]

My old Oppo 93 died so I bought a new Yamaha BD-A1060. The Yamaha does everything but DVD A's. I have quite a few from the old days. I looked online and someone said they do play DVD A's. Sure enough when I fired one up it played as a multi-PCM through my new Anthem. This is exactly what the display read out as when I played a DVD A through the old Oppo which was DVD A capable. What gives? The old Oppo had audio cable jacks which I used with an old receiver, but when running the DVD A through an HDMI cable I'm getting the same (multi PCM) result through my receiver. It's probably a dumb question but I'm wondering what's going on? Has HDMI superceded the old DVD A format?

 

[JohnRice]

It clearly does play DVD-A. Seems like there’s no question. hdmi is just a way to connect the player to the receiver.

 

[Doug Smith]

Yeah it's weird that Yamaha didn't mention it in their advertising of the player. They mention SACD playback and everything else but DVD A. I wonder if in order to include DVD A in your unit you must provide analog audio outs because that's the only way DVD A was originally played before HDMI?

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Multi-channel analog outputs are not a requirement for supporting DVD-Audio -- HDMI will handle it as well. Both my Sony X-800 UHD player and Oppo 980H DVD player support both SACD and DVD-Audio via the HDMI connections from those players to my Denon X3300W receiver. The SACD audio signal is DSD, while DVD-Audio is multi-channel PCM.

It appears your new Yamaha has a hidden feature. Enjoy the bonus!

 

[Doug Smith]

Yeah nice. DVD A came out before HDMI cabling and you needed the analogs as toslink, etc. wouldn't do the trick. Maybe the format is growing so old that they thought it was not worth it to mention. I can't say that I was the first to discover this with this model of Yamaha - I read an old review that mentioned it as well. The reviewer was pleasantly surprised too. I still have plenty of DVD A's and love the sound so I will enjoy. I wish I still had the old Oppo to compare the sound between analogs and multi-channel PCM over the HDMI cable.