Why is digital audio out so hard to find on modern receivers?

[quakefiend420]

I recently upgraded from an old Kenwood VR-4090 to an Onkyo RC180. Fantastic upgrade, save for one thing...no digital audio out. I looked around and in order to find a receiver with DA output and the other features I wanted i was looking at several hundred more than the RC180. This used to be a fairly common output, what happened in the last several years?

I used to run coaxial to my bedroom from my main receiver, now I'm going to have to run a full set of analog outputs 🙁 And this whole "if it comes in over HDMI, then it stays on HDMI" thing is annoying, the say the least. Stupid anti-piracy BS.

Surely running digital audio to another amplifier is something that quite a few people do(or did), it just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

 

[alcoholbob]

They are pretty rare indeed. Neither the flagship Onkyo TX-NR5008 or Yamaha RX-Z11 have optical outs. The Z-11 has only digital coaxial out.

Denon's receivers do appear to have optical outputs. The 2311, 3311, and 4311 all have a single optical output.

 

[quakefiend420]

Is there some sort of breakout box I can get that will allow me to either run the DA inputs to the receiver or another amplifier? Crappy mspaint to follow.

 

[Tiamat]

perhaps I am reading your post wrong, but it seems that you could just use a receiver with multiple zones on its amplifier section?

Other than that, what you seem to be describing in your MS Paint is a Speaker Selector, or speaker switch box. Some argue that they add coloration to the sound, i have never tried them out. They are most commonly used when you have multiple amp+speaker combination but only one source and you want to quickly switch between the amp+speaker combination to see if you like one over the other.

BTW, unless you have digital amplifiers, they won't be accepting digital inputs. Most amplifiers only accept analog as RCA or XLR type connections.

 

[Emulex]

i have a toslink mirror - its archaic was $9 at rat-shack but can reflect the toslink signal from 1 input to 4 outputs 😉

oh yeah it was 70% off so it was $3 - works awesome.

you could do hdfury and convert the digital to analog and split it n-ways. they have 7.1 analog hdcp decryptors now

 

[Fallen Kell]

Digital outs went the way of the dodo when HDMI v1.3 arrived. Even for multi-zone systems, HDMI is the preferred method anymore, but not because consumers wanted it. It was pushed heavily from the MPAA/RIAA due to it being encrypted, not that it matters anymore now that the HDMI master key has been discovered/leaked.

 

[quakefiend420]

perhaps I am reading your post wrong, but it seems that you could just use a receiver with multiple zones on its amplifier section?

Other than that, what you seem to be describing in your MS Paint is a Speaker Selector, or speaker switch box. Some argue that they add coloration to the sound, i have never tried them out. They are most commonly used when you have multiple amp+speaker combination but only one source and you want to quickly switch between the amp+speaker combination to see if you like one over the other.

BTW, unless you have digital amplifiers, they won't be accepting digital inputs. Most amplifiers only accept analog as RCA or XLR type connections.

the amplifier i'm referring to is another receiver with a 5.1 setup of it's own, so i'd prefer to run a single cable rather than 6, plus most of my signals are digital, so running analog cabling wouldn't do me much good anyway

i'm not looking for something to switch high level speakers outputs, i'm looking for something to allow me to run multiple digital inputs into a single box that will route those sources through two different outputs to run to two different amplifiers.

 

[quakefiend420]

i have a toslink mirror - its archaic was $9 at rat-shack but can reflect the toslink signal from 1 input to 4 outputs 😉

oh yeah it was 70% off so it was $3 - works awesome.

you could do hdfury and convert the digital to analog and split it n-ways. they have 7.1 analog hdcp decryptors now

hmm...interesting