Hi Gang, Santa was good to me over the Christmas and I got a SONY Bravia LCD HD ready television, could any one suggest the amount of scart and audio leads required to run this through a cinema surround (Pioneer) unit to make it sound good, you know like when you are watching a DVD? as the sound from the tv is fairly plain if you know what i mean!!! and i also have a cable box to wire up to the TV and cinema surround ,any help or suggestions are appreciated. many thanks in advance.
well I have an onkyo 7.1 surround. along with a 42" jvc lcd and a bluray. I have the bluray running to the tv with a hdmi and for sound I got a optical connection running straight from my bluray, 360, and ps3 into the onkyo. It sounds amazing...there are surround sound systems out there that you can use an HDMI for audio and video.
Whatever you do, if your system has a digital optical output, is make sure you get a set of TOSLINK cables (optical fiber). This will make for a MUCH better audio experience then your standard red/white 2-channel stereo RCA cables. Also, don't be fooled by those Monster cables and such, they carry a high price and you will get the same sound as if you went with a 14 dollar pair. Make sure you have everything setup to where your not running a TOSLINK cable any longer then 10ft, anything longer then that and I believe you will run into some data loss issues due to interference with the signal from some of your other a/v components.
thanks for the prompt reply,could I ask you to simplify it for me the only term i understood was Blue Ray..as you can probably guess I am an novice when it comes to this sort of thing,could you tell me in simple terms what i need IE 2 scarts one to go from the tv to the dvd, one audio to go from the dvd to whatever...if you know what i mean, i will then go out and buy them. many thanks and sorry for being a nuisance.
Ok, first you gotta take a look at your equipment. What do you have now? For instance, I got my HD-DVD player, my receiver, and my speakers. Now, I want to get 5.1/7.1 Dolby Digital/Dolby Digital Plus/Dolby TrueHD sound. For that, I'm going to need a set of TOSLINK cables (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK). Next I'm going to run the TOSLINK cables for audio from my HD-DVD player to the optical input on the back of my a/v receiver, which in turn, goes out to the rest of the speakers. Now I got the best possible audio solution for my DVD player. Now for the video, I'm just going to get a set of component cables and (red/blue/green) and run those from the back of my HD-DVD player to the back of my HD Television. You also mentioned that you want the sound from your cable box to run through your cinema surround setup. As mentioned before, to get the best audio IMO, I choose to go digital. I don't know if your cable box has an ouput for a digital connection, if so, do the same as above. You will need another TOSLINK cable that will go from the back of your cable box and into your receiver and have your component cables (red/blue/green) running to the back of the tv. All that should work so, if your hd cable box came with the component cables, you should only need the following: 1. One set of red/blue/green component cables. (run from back of dvd player to receiver) 2. Two sets of TOSLINK (digital optical)cables. (runs from cable box to receiver/runs from dvd player to receiver)
Goodswipe... Many many thanks that is exactly the advice i was looking for. I don,t know if Toslllink is available in Ireland however i will take a look in the stores and get what you suggested.I will get back to you at some stage over the weekend and let you know how I get on, again many thanks Des DUBLIN
Also, if any of your hardware has a digital coaxial ouput/input, you could also choose that for your audio. Some people say they beleive it's just as good as digital optical and usually a lot cheaper.
I have being playing my audio for my tv using the red and white from my direct tv hd dvr receiver to my philips surround sound, today i got a matrix coax digital audio cable(orange) to use from the receiver to the surround but if I take the red and white out i don't get any sound, could it be that the show i was watching didn't have digital audio, or do i still need to use the red and white as well as the digital(orange)?
You need to make sure that the input on the receiver is set correctly. You know like AUX, Video, etc. You want the receiver to be set to whatever input the digital coaxial cable is in. You don't need both cables hooked up.
goodswipe: You can't get Dolby Digital+ or Dolby True HD from Toslink. You need HDMI or 5.1 analog cables. For example, with my Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD player and Onkyo TX-SR 805 AVR I have 3 ways to get Dolby True HD: > Let the XA2 decode the True HD soundtrack and send the 5.1 LPCM data thru HDMI to the Onkyo. > Let the XA2 decode the True HD soundtrack and send the 5.1 channels thru 5.1 analog cables to the Onkyo. > Send the True HD soundtrack undecoded by bitstream transmission thru HDMI 1.3 to the Onkyo. The Onkyo then decodes the True HD soundtrack. Toslink doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with Dolby TrueHD or DD Plus. If you use toslink the DD+ or True HD soundtrack gets downmixed to DTS or plain vanilla Dolby Digital depending on your player model.
Ah, my receiver is fairly old, as it only supports dolby digital. Never really thought about that. Nice to know.
I have a coax digital audio cable going from my directv receiver to my surround, is this digital hookup giving me the best audio ?, considering that my surround does not have fiberoptic.
Yes! Digital is always best. Toslink/optical and coaxial are exactly the same. Regardless of what some people say about one being better then the other. They both send raw data and have the same bandwidth. I actually prefer coaxial for a few reasons 1) They are usually cheaper to buy 2) Toslink/Optical are more fragile and if the cable is kinked it can fracture internally, rendering it useless. With your DirecTV, just make sure that in the sound settings you have set it to output raw or bitstream. That way your receiver gets the raw data, not the decompressed PCM stream. If you allow your DirecTV to decode the audio then you will only get 2 channels of PCM as optical and coaxial have a limited bandwidth of 1536kbps (not enough for 5.1 PCM).
Ryu, thanks,, my PS2 only has fiber optic audio out but then again my surround doesn't have fiber optic is there some kind of converter or cable that go from fiber optic to analog stereo?
?? Are you really only only after analog stereo? If you are, just use the PS2 AV multi out. If you need a longer cable, then just purchase a set of stereo RCA's with a male at one end and female at the other. About the optical or coaxial, yes of course for my PS2 and PS3 I use optical as I don't have a choice. When I do have a choice I will probably choose coaxial because of the reasons I posted above.
thanks Ryu once again, yes i got my digital sound with the coax, like you said i just had to set it to that input, and thanks i didn't think of using the av the video to the tv and the red and white to my surround, works great playstation is cool as hell in surround,, i can only imagine ps3
