Dolby True HD + Amp with no HDMI input

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

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Joined
24 Sep 2005
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Hey there!

I’m in the market for a new audio hifi set up and have my sights on an Audiolab 9000A plus some PMC Prodigy 1 or 5 speakers.

The once annoyance with that setup is that the amp has no HDMI input. Booo!

I’m trying to figure out how I could get access to Dolby True HD if I wanted to… from what I gather, this won’t work with an optical input.

One potential solution is to buy a streamer with an HDMI input (e.g. Bluesound NODE) and then output back to the amp with a coaxial cable + a sub with the sub-out. Would this work?

… or am I just wasting my time and should stick with an optical amp input, for the sake of a 2.1 setup?

Thoughts? Thanks :)
 
Thanks for the replies all.

Good questions + comments re: the lack of supporting speakers. My intention here was to run a simple 2.1 set-up, without the surround speakers. Since I would be able to run the highest quality stereo output music through the amp, I was curious to see whether I could run the highest quality sound to support my TV in a AV setup.

My penultimate Q was whether this would be a waste of time considering the limitations of the setup and whether I would be better off just sticking with the optical output from a Blu-ray player.

lucid said:
Maybe I'm missing something here, but why do you want access to Dolby True HD (a surround sound format) when you have your eye on a Hi-Fi stereo amp? What are you hoping to achieve? What content do you think is out there that is stereo but encoded as DDTHD?
Click to expand...

I think… all of it? Or rather, you can still funnel a 5.1 capable audio track through a 2.1 system by setting up your blue ray playing accordingly, etc.

As far as I know, DDTHD signifies the quality of the lossless signal. It can be compatible with stereo outputs as, although there isn’t the channel separation, the bitrate is maintained - for example see here:

Dolby TrueHD vs Dolby Atmos: Understanding the Differences - HomeTheaterReview

Unravel the mystery of Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos. Discover their differences and how they can enhance your home theater experience.
hometheaterreview.com hometheaterreview.com
 
Last edited:
@lucid again thanks for the info.

What I’m ultimately after is getting lossless audio in the 2.1 setup. If I go the optical cable route, this won’t work as the optical cable won’t support this bitrate (as far as I can tell).

I think I would need this…

A Blu-ray player with HDMI out to the TV and a second HDMI audio output (carrying the lossless signal). The Blu-ray player would be

The second HDMI would go to a receiver, which has a coaxial out. The coaxial out would go to the amp.

Then on the blue ray player I’d select the audio as stereo.

The HDMI should then carry the stereo lossless DolbyTHD signal to the receiver, which in turn carries it to the amp.

Would that not work….? Or, would it be pointless? Or…?

@hornetstinger it would be for 4k but as per my example above I think I’d have a seperate HDMI to the TV.
 
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