Sony STR-DN1000 Receiver - HDMI 3 has better audio? (1 Viewer)

Any thoughts on this? The manual says that HDMI 3 has better audio than the other 3 HDMI inputs, but that's ALL that it says. No rhyme or reason or explanation given. Shouldn't they all have great audio? I've read review after review and no one even mentions this.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

I looked at the manual on-line (http://www.docs.sony.com/release/STRDN1000.pdf) and there it is on page 26:

HDMI 3 input has a better sound quality. When you need a higher sound quality, connect your component to the HDMI IN 3 (for AUDIO) jack and select HDMI 3 as input.

No explanation. That makes no sense. There are 4 HDMI inputs. I imagine they should all be the same.

 

It's even printed underneath the input on the back of the unit "HDMI IN 3 (for AUDIO)".

 

Ok... I actually made it through to level 3 tech support at SONY with this question, got an actual engineer, and HE had to put me on hold to get an answer from HIS supervisor (he said it was the first time he'd heard of this and didn't realize there was mention of this in the manual).
Turns out that when this unit was designed, HDMI 3 was wired with a shorter path to the output than HDMI inputs 1,2, & 4, so when looked at with a scope, it actually has a slightly greater frequency range. Not that you could ever hear the difference. That's the only difference between them is the length of the wiring.
My guess is that some marketing person thought it might be a good selling point, so they mentioned it in the manual without any explanation and just created confusion. I'm going to hook my Blu-Ray to that input since it has to run the True HD and DTS and all that.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing the end result. I am surprised that you were able to get through to someone who was actually able to answer the question!

 

[gene c]

I wonder if #3 is actually better than the others, or if it's what it should be and 1-2-4 are just routed so poorly that they're worse than they should be. Know what I mean? Interesting...and confusing .