BluRay Optical Out to Coax In DAC

[chosenhandle]

hello;

 

First post!

 

I have a PS3 I use for BluRay and just picked up the new Neil Young Archive set on BluRay. The issue I am having is that my DAC has only a coax in while the PS3 has only optical out.

 

I bought a cheap ($15) converter just to make it work, but would like a better, more permanent solution to this issue. Some have mentioned the M-Audio converter ($60) while others have recommended the Monarchy DIP. I guess the main question is: what can I use that will minimize jitter and maintain the signal as best as possible.

 

Final question: Although this set of disks is labeled as being 24/192, I read somewhere that blu-ray will only output 24/96 via the optical port. Anyone know if that is correct?

 

Thanks!

Paul

 

[chosenhandle]

found the answers.

 

bluray only outputs 24/96 digitally.

 

The simplest answer is to buy a HDMI conversion box which separates the video and audio signal (24/192 LPCM) from a HDMI input and outputs toslink/coax and component video or dvi or rgb.

 

In any case, I can now listen to the Neil Young blu-ray disk through my outboard 24/192 DAC.

 

Thanks to all the people in all the forums I have visited for assistance.

 

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

Can you give us any more information about the device you have got to do this?

 

manufacturer, product name, cost, etc would all be of use and interest to people here I think. If this works - I suspect could use similar device to record from SACD to computer at high resolution with a device that sent LPCM over the HDMI for 2channel SACD.

 

Eloise

 

[bottlerocket]

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3939

 

If so, can you confirm the output resolution?

 

[chosenhandle]

here is one product. With credit to a poster in audiogon. Several have been written about in the various forums. The Altona products seem to get good reviews.

 

http://www.allaboutadapters.com/hdautooptoco.html

 

The only reason I like this one is that it has a coax output. My Opus 21 only has coax inputs.

 

I have not received the unit yet, but based on what I have read, it outputs 24/192.

 

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

Thanks for the links ... would be great if you are able to confirm you can get 24/192 out of it from your BluRays. If at all possible, could you see if you can get similar output from 2 channel SACD from your PS3?

 

[chosenhandle]

I will put an email into the company and ask for verification.

 

As to the SACD, my PS3 doesn not support SACD. I do have a universal player that has SACD capabilities, but without any ability to output SACD data (Pioneer Elite 47a).

 

From what I remember in the past, Sony is very protective of the data stream with SACD and it is difficult to extract it in 24/192. I am sure things have changed since I last looked into it, but I would be surprised if it was possible.

 

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

My reference point for what is possible is that I know that there are Meridian multichannel processes which will accept (unencrypted) multi-channel SPDIF via 3 connectors (basically 3x 2 channel to give 6 channels) and there are devices which will allow you to convert the Multi-channel LPCM stream from HDMI into the required connections. Once converted to PCM, I don't think there is any more encryption than on the data stream from BluRay - certainly my Yamaha AVR doesn't distinguish between a SACD stream - converted and sent as LPCM - and a DTS MA soundtrack sent the same way.

 

Theoretically, the device should work with any universal (SACD) player that converts the DSD to PCM for transmission over HDMI - unfortunately I seam to recall the Pioneer players will only send DSD data.

 

Eloise

 

[chosenhandle]

I was under the impression that when DSD is converted to PCM, it is down-sampled. Another wonderful data protection scheme from the boys at Sony. Perhaps this is no longer true, which would be great.

 

There was a thread over at audiocircle.com/starting block regarding sacd a while back. It included some helpful information about sacd (and it totally unraveled and turned into a pissing match at the end). But, I found it useful.

 

When I receive a response to the email I sent to the manufacturer, I will post the results.

 

[Audio_ELF]

My only knowledge is that when playing an SACD on my PS3, the Yamaha receiver says the signal is 5.1 channel LPCM at 176.4/24 - though it says 3/2/1 format (i.e. 3 fronts, 2 rears, 1 sub) for 2 channel layer as well as multi-channel layer. Yes this is technically down-sampled from the PCM, but is still of high quality. Now how good quality the re-sampling is in the PS3 I don't know, but the signal is certainly of high quality.

 

Some devices limit that further to 16/44.1 or 24/96 because they are strictly following the SACD license as set down by Sony. Others interpret it different (or out and out break it). For example devices that take HDMI shouldn't under HDMI license output anything more than 16/48 as digital output. Equally video devices shouldn't take a HDMI signal and output it as 1080p over component, but such devices exist, built by small companies who are banking on the fact it's too difficult to prosecute them in China / Taiwan.

 

As an aside... my understanding, reading information (admittedly sales material and journalistic reviews) for the Korg and Tascam DSD recorders, was that one of their reasons for using DSD when recording "live" material was that it was simple to convert to any PCM bit/sample rate without loosing quality compared with starting with (say) 24/192 or even 24/176.4 which doesn't convert well to 16/44.1 for CD quality.

 

Eloise

 

[One and a half]

"The name Blu-ray is derived from the underlying technology, which utilizes a blue-violet laser to read and write data. The name is a combination of "Blue" (blue-violet laser) and "Ray" (optical ray). According to the Blu-ray Disc Association the spelling of "Blu-ray" is not a mistake, the character "e" was intentionally left out so the term could be registered as a trademark.

 

The correct full name is Blu-ray Disc, not Blu-ray Disk (incorrect spelling)

The correct shortened name is Blu-ray, not Blu-Ray (incorrect capitalization) or Blue-ray (incorrect spelling)

The correct abbreviation is BD, not BR or BRD (wrong abbreviation)"

 

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_audio_codecs

 

We get SACD, CD, DAC and all the other abbreviations correct, may as well get BD right Also some very good references on that page.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

[chosenhandle]

The device manufacturer quickly responded to my question about the word length/sample.

 

They confirmed that it passes 24 bit 192khz LPCM sample rate data.

 

They also are on back-order until the end of the month. I found a second website which seems to offer the identical item with a different name. It is in stock and a bit cheaper.

 

 

 

 

[One and a half]

 

"They confirmed that it passes 24 bit 192khz LPCM sample rate data" on HDMI or coax? To break out of the "protected loop" that Intel and Microsoft welded together, there should be no diversions from point to point. Elf pointed out that this would be breaking HDMI specs, and this is correct.

Also would have a bit of difficulty in believing how HDCP would repeat in a box like that to maintain that integrity, as well as keeping the clock information intact for the video and all.

Just wondering.

 

 

 

[emmodad]

"I found a second website which seems to offer the identical item with a different name."

 

link please?

 

[chosenhandle]

link for second source

 

http://smartvm.com/HDMI-Switcher-2x1-v13b-with-Separate-SPDIF-COAX-Toslink-Audio-Output-Channel-P39534.htm

 

specs are slightly different, but devices look identical

 

regarding the issue of 24/192....that is the LPCM signal passed to the coax.

 

One-and-One-Half: I do not know anything HDCP, I am simply reporting what I have discovered about my desire to move 23/192 bluray data to my DAC. This is all new to me. I may buy this thing only to find out it doesn't work...who knows.

 

 

[One and a half]

Like a lot of us here, terms and methods are bordering on the unknown. There are many claims out there on the internet, that you have to try, prod, poke, push to get the answer. But one needs to know the question! The last couple of days has been gathering data on the web, to make it clear in my mind how part of coomputer audio works, so here's what i have found....so far.

 

HDCP is an encyption key exchange between two HDMI devices, the source (a computor, Blu-ray) and the sink (a Receiver, DAC, TV). The key encryption is 40bit something, and is initiated by the sink to the source. If the source is happy with the authentication from the sink, the source starts transmitting what the sink requires. In our case, 24/192PCM Audio, 24/96 PCM, or it's a BD track with DTS-Master audio.

 

However, in the case of coaxial or toslink connection, there's no authentication going back to the source. Ahah, says the source, I'm not going to give the sink 24/96, but 16/44.1 or 16/48 whatever the source has been programmed to. Since there's no video handshake, there's not going to be any video data at all.

 

These methods supported by the HDMI group consist of Sony, Toshiba, Intel, Microsoft, maybe Apple, dunno. It's all designed so that the transmission of data from the source goes to licensed HDMI sinks, and if there's something else connected that isn't HDCP compliant on the HDMI link, there's going to be a shortfall of quality or nothing.

That's the legal standpoint.

 

Today, I went into our local Sony store and asked them to hook up their latest Vaio with HDMI to a Sony AV receiver and see what would happen if we played ALAC and a 24/96 WAV from Foobar2000, using WASAPI as playback.

 

The equipment was what they had in the store, DA-3400ES AV receiver, and a Sony FW45 Vaio notebook out of the box Vista SP1. The HDMI cable was very elaborate, but I didn't notice which type it was.

 

Control Panel was set to match the receiver's decoding of 24/96. The sound card was the HDMI interface. I was expecting the receiver to say LPCM 48kHz for everything, but NO!!

Correctly, the ALAC file, was 44.1kHz, and it displayed on the receiver "LPCM 44.1", and 96kHz for the WAV file. I was very impressed, that ***finally*** there's a solution to use HDMI and a receiver capable of correctly identifying the audio file and converting it properley, without an external DAC using SPDIF/optical/coax.

 

Because, the clock in the computor is linked to the clock in the receiver's DAC through the direct connection on the HDMI cable, and if you choose the right HDMI transmitters and receivers in the source and sink, jitter is not a concern at all. So, SPDIF and toslink jitter is thrown out the window. USB limitations of the upper speeds are also gone.

 

HDMI audio is very elegant, simple. The audio information is actually encoded in the video streams blanking areas. Video card manufacturers are just interested in transmitting video, not audio, and audio card manufacturer's don't bother (apart from Asus) to create a full bottle HDMI output, because you need to add the HDCP complication and video into the equation....Kudos to Intel for changing AC97 to HD audio, and curses for HDCP.

 

I suppose now the debate will continue as to what receiver has the greatest fidelity..... but at least the transport has a great foundation.

 

[MicJames]

Duplicate post deletion

[MicJames]

found the answers.

 

bluray only outputs 24/96 digitally.

 

The simplest answer is to buy a HDMI conversion box which separates the video and audio signal (24/192 LPCM) from a HDMI input and outputs toslink/coax and component video or dvi or rgb.

 

In any case, I can now listen to the Neil Young blu-ray disk through my outboard 24/192 DAC.

 

Thanks to all the people in all the forums I have visited for assistance.

 

Hi, chosenhandle. I also have a ps3 for digital audio transport sending to a DAC with a coaxial input only. My DAC, however, does not display the digital resolution that is being converted.

 

With Blu-Ray audio, can you confirm that you are getting 24/96 to the DAC through the optical out (I thought ps3 restricted it to 16/44.1), and 24/192 through the hdmi de-embedder?

 

Thanks for your help.

[Audio_ELF]

Just to make you aware... This thread was last posted to in December 2009 so much of the information will be depreciated.

[MicJames]

Point taken. Searching the web for this information without much luck yet, though, so I'll take whatever I can get at this point.