AV amp digital out

I'm pondering adding AV to my system's repertoire.

I will only do this in such a way that plays second fiddle to stereo performance, in other words I won't compromise stereo performance in any way to achieve the AV functionality.

With that in mind, I have come up with a plan, but it requires a specific capability on the part of the AV processor.

I will feed in a dd or dts stream to the AV processor from the DVD. What I want to get out is line level (or speaker level...) for centre, surrounds and LFE, and I want a PCM stereo digital output for the front channels to feed to the DAC/DEQ.

Is this a normal and easily doable config on most AVRs? I was thinking along the lines of the Rotel RSP-966/976 processor and a 6 channel rotel power amp (bridged to 3).

 

isaac,
just get yourself a yamaha dsp e-800. no it doesn't have all the whizzy new 6.1, 7.1 999.1 or dolby pro logic 9 etc. but it does have good solid ac3 and dts decoding, the ability to output any or all of it's 5 channels at line level and internal amps for the center and 2 rears. it's about 200 new or less 2nd hand.
nothing else makes as much sense to enable an audiophile rig to play dvd's competantly. if you have any money left over, go rent some dvd's or buy some more music.
cheers


julian.

 

That was another one I was considering.

But it didn't answer my question...

 

Been there, done that, regretted it..

Processor that I know of that output L/R in digital:

Tact TCS
MSB MDP-3X
Meridian 561

I had a (used) meridian for a while - but it was awful to use, you needed a PC to program it properly if you didn't like the IO assignment and the on screen display was crap.

The Tact is way expensive and the MSB is rather "quirky" (and not cheap for what it does).

The problem you run up against, and that stymes the whole deal, is getting the 6 channel volume control - you'll have to feed the C/LS/LR/sub from the processor line-outs AND the DAC output into a 6 channel pre-amp. Good 6 channel pre-amps are rather thin on the ground and are expensive for what they are (MSB have a 6 channel volume control to further extend their "quirky" components )

In my experience what you want to do is good in theory, but is a pain in practice...

 

That's a fair point... any volume control in the digital domain will lead to truncation...

Hmmm. In that case it might just be line in to the stereo amp then...

 

incidentally, its the preouts you'd use from the processor to your amp, not line outs. yamaha e800 is ok but you can get a 6.1 marantz sr4300 for £200 and at least you won't have to upgrade for a little while longer.

 

It's not as easy thing to do, sadly enough. I've been thinking about this a bit m'self as I've been considering an external DAC (even more so now I've heard my ATCs driven by Ditton's lovely Audio Synthesis combo... grumble grumble)

I suppose you could always feed the analogue preouts from the proc into a decent quality ADC, which would then feed your DAC. You might encounter problems with delayed audio (lip sync problems) but most procs should allow you to fix it with a bit of fiddling.

Dunc

 

Why do you want a digital out for the L/R channels? Why not just line level pre-outs that you feed to an input in your S300? The Yammy E800 is one solution but it's well past it's sell by date. You can get better performance from, say, a Marantz SR4300 which has pre-outs for all channels.

I have the older Marantz SR4200 and feed it's L/R pre-outs to an input on my pre. All you need to do is find the right volume to set on your pre/integrated and then just use the AV amp volume control.

Michael.

 

Looks like I may do it that way.

So... any thoughts on the rotel RSP processors? I'd rather have a processor than one with amplification in it.

 

Isaac, I used to have a Rotel RSP985; it was great for movies but certainly no better than their mid-range pre-amps when it came to music . However, this was an older model and I'd be surprised if their current offerings weren't an improvement in this department (newer DACs, improved analogue stages etc.).

 

It will only be used for movies. The current DAC/integrated will continue to handle music duties.

 

whay not go for a receiver?
you will need amp for center rears anyway........

if you want cheap but descent processor - cyrus is a nice one, lexicon DC-1 can be bought for 1,000$US s/h and its HT performance is stellar.

 

there is a rsp986 on hififorsale i believe, but, again, its the older 5.1 variety and it probably won't have prologic2 on it either.

you would probably be surprised at how good the processors are on for example the marantz ones. they're all filtered down from the top of the range designs of 2 or 3 yrs ago