Problems getting digital audio to my analog-only whole house system (1 Viewer)

[mgerity]

Okay, so I've been struggling with something for a while now, and it has now gotten worse, so I'm looking for some assistance. My basic problem is this: my whole house audio system only accepts analog inputs. (This is true of many, many such systems, so simply updating that system doesn't appear to be the answer, and besides, I'm deeply entrenched in this system.) Meanwhile, most of my sources these days are digital. I'm not trying to illegally copy anything, and I own the material I'm listening to, so I SHOULD be able to send a digital signal to my receiver and have it convert it to analog and output it to the audio out connections and on to my whole house system. Whoops! Nope! Wildly overzealous copyright protection has apparently convinced just about every AV company out there to prevent this from happening, at least when dealing with digital input via HDMI. Seems to me that, logically, they should be more concerned with digital output, not analog, but I don't think logic had anything at all to do with this industry-wide practice. This is true of my current Yamaha receiver and the Arcam that I am looking at getting. Okay, so this is wildly inconvenient, but I was able to get around the problem by running an extra set of analog cables from every source back over to the receiver. (Did I mention how wildly inconvenient that is? The ENTIRE convenience of HDMI audio is completely blown out of the water now that I have run extra cables from every single source back to the receiver.) Unfortunately, even this "solution" has become a problem now. First off, I now have some sources that don't have analog outputs at all. Next up, it appears that some have made it so that simultaneous output via HDMI and analog is not possible. This is a particular problem with my cable box. Running separate analog audio from it to my receiver used to work, but it suddenly stopped. I believe that the cable company updated the software to block simultaneous audio output, as there is no other explanation for the fact that this suddenly stopped working when no other changes were made to my system. So, what is the solution? Any ideas? If the reciever sent the incoming digital audio signal to the digital audio outs, I could probably put a DAC between the digital outs of the reciever and the analog inputs of the whole house system. However, if the receiver refuses to convert digital HDMI audio input to analog audio output, I can't imagine that they would allow digital audio output. Any other ideas? I'm sure I'm not the only one facing this issue.

 

[gene c]

I'm not sure if something like this would work for you but maybe you could slip a digital to analog converter into the mix after the receiver? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=Digital+Audio+To+Analog+Audio+Converter+&x=3&y=22

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

There’s probably no reason why you couldn’t use a D/A converter with a receiver that has a digital output for zone 2 or record. Digital outputs aren’t anything new – my 5-year-old Yamaha Z9 has them - but you typically are going to find them only on upper-tier AVRs. Digital outputs do seem to be filtering down to mid-level AVRs; Yamaha’s recent Aventage 3100/3010 models have them. If adding analog cables is a hassle, I imaging having to pony up a princely sum just to get that feature is even worse... Regards, Wayne A. Pflughaupt