Jim Lesurf wrote:

You may well be able to adjust the default setting so that the DVD
player always provides a S/PDIF stereo stream even when playing Dolby
x.1 (and DTS if the player understands that). My (cheap) DVD player
allows the user to choose between a default of:

1) 'bitstream'. This will pass out the digital surround information
so an external decoder/receiver can handle it. The problem being that
older stereo DACs like the Meridian 203/263/563 don't understand this
format.

2) 'S/PDIF'. This only outputs stereo, so loses any digital surround
info, but can be understood by stereo DACs.

The names used may vary from one model of DVD player to another, but a
setting for this may well be on a user menu somewhere.

I had a look through the menus. There was some stuff about setting the
output to left/right, stereo, and various options for activating rear,
centre and sub, but I'm not sure that it applied to the digital output.
(Didn't work with my Thunderbirds DVD, anyway - I'll need to track down the
Treasure Island one and see if that's better.)

The manual does talk about connecting the digital out to an AV amp for home
theatre use, so I'm wondering if it automatically switches the output to
suit the type of disk being played.


If starting from scratch a good CD and/or DVD player is probably the
simplest bet. However my experience, like yours, is that if you have
cheap DVD player then an external DAC can make a noticable
improvement.

One thing that strikes me about using a DAC is that the analogue part of the
CD sound is taken care of. If the transport packs in on an integrated
player, it might be neccessary to change the whole unit, and potentially
lose the sound character that one is used to.


--
Wally
www.art-gallery.myby.co.uk
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