In article , Wally
wrote:
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).

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.)

Another term to watch out for is 'LPCM'. Some players use this to identify
that the output may be S/PDIF. I'm afraid that the usage of many terms like
these is inconsistent and different makers use them for different purposes,
and sometimes for multiple purposes. This contributes to this area being a
bit of a minefield!

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.

It may do. However my DV player outputs S/PDIF from both 'LPCM' soundtracks
on DVDs and well as 'Dolby x.1' soundtracks. The player is a cheap one and
does not understand DTS, so for that I get total silence from all outputs.


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.

The above is true. However my view is that good CD/DVD players should sound
fairly similar as the object is to let you hear the waveforms as defined by
the data on the disc. Hence the difference from one player to another
should not be very great. This is a council of perfection, though. ;-

Slainte,

Jim

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