HDMI Audio Really Necessary??

[JasonM]

I just purchased a new A/V receiver for a really good deal to replace my aging receiver, but now doing some research I see that it supports HDMI video pass-through, but not HDMI audio. I am planning on adding a blu-ray player soon and see that blu-ray needs HDMI video and audio to be truely blu-ray. However, I live in a apartment where my surround sound experiece is kept to a mild 5.1 listening level. My question is if HDMI A/V is really that much better than just HDMI video and fiber audio considering I cannot push the audio levels to full blown home theater levels and that I would have to go out and purchase a more expensive A/V receiver?

Thanks in advance

[MrBoylan]

I just purchased a new A/V receiver for a really good deal to replace my aging receiver, but now doing some research I see that it supports HDMI video pass-through, but not HDMI audio. I am planning on adding a blu-ray player soon and see that blu-ray needs HDMI video and audio to be truely blu-ray. However, I live in a apartment where my surround sound experiece is kept to a mild 5.1 listening level. My question is if HDMI A/V is really that much better than just HDMI video and fiber audio considering I cannot push the audio levels to full blown home theater levels and that I would have to go out and purchase a more expensive A/V receiver?

Thanks in advance

Sometimes the "really good deal" ends up being an "uh oh, I didn't know it didn't have that!" and that was the reason that it was a "really good deal" in the first place! IMHO, HDMI audio support is essential in a receiver now. Not only is this really the best (and on most players, the only) way to support the new lossless surround sound codecs on Blu-ray Disc, it's also the only way to support multi-channel PCM soundtracks that you can find on many blu-ray discs (these are converted to two-channel PCM over fiberoptic or coax out).

Yes, there are workarounds for this - many Blu-ray Discs with multi-channel PCM tracks also have a standard DTS or Dolby Digital track you can switch to in the disc set-up menu, and there are some players (LG and Samsung, specifically) that can do dynamic re-encoding from multi-channel PCM to standard DTS out (aka "bitstream (re-encode)"), but it's still not going to be as high quality as the original PCM source. And this feature is not available on the Panasonic and Sony players (only Samsung and LG, I believe).

Also, using HDMI for the audio is a simpler solution as it means only one cable per source from source to receiver and one cable from receiver to TV. If you rely on fiberoptic or coax digital connections, you will get good quality sound (at least as good as DVD and in some cases better, with the multi-channel PCM exception noted above), but your connections will be a little more complicated. And frankly, the set-up of this gear is complicated enough already without having to worry about multiple cables!

If it were me, I'd return the "good deal" and go with a newer HDMI-audio-enabled receiver. You can get Pioneer receivers starting at $300 with on-board decoders for DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD, Yamaha and Onkyo have models starting at around $400 I believe. Even Denon is introducing a sub-$400 receiver with built-in HD Audio decoders.

Here are a few that I would put on my budget HDMI-audio equipped receiver "short list" although we have not personally tested and of these, so use this as a guideline but not a definitive recommendation:

• Yamaha RX-V465BL 525 Watt 5-Channel Home Theater Receiver
• Denon AVR1610 5.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver with 1080p HDMI Connectivity
• Onkyo TX-SR507 5.1-Channel A/V Surround Home Theater Receiver
• Pioneer VSX-919AH-K 120 Watts A/V Receiver with Full Color GUI/OSD, Advanced MCACC and Analog to HDMI Up-Conversion

These are all 5.1 channel receivers with HD audio decoding over HDMI, all selling for under $400 and all from audiophile-oriented brands. They do lack some of the more advanced features like analog video transcoding to HDMI (except the Pioneer), but if your Blu-ray player or TV is good at upconverting standard def sources, then this is not really necessary in the receiver. They're also primarily suited for 5.1-channel surround. If you need 7.1 (like for a large or oddly shaped room) then you might consider step-up models that do support 7.1. In most cases, 5.1-channel surround is perfectly fine.

Good luck!

-Chris