HDMI or Digital Coax. ?

[agular]

What method is the best for transferring an AUDIO signal, HDMI or Digital Coax?
I am going directly to my monitor via the HDMI and am currently using a Digital Coax for audio.
My receiver a Denon AVR-5805 has HDMI inputs, and out puts. Reason for HDMI directly into TV is Receiver won’t pass 1080P

 

[Penny]

A digital signal is a digital signal, there should be no difference between the two when passing the same signal. Now, if you're thinking about passing a high bandwidth signal then HDMI is not only your best choice but your only choice when talking about the new high def codecs (DTS MA, or Dolby True HD). Coaxial and Optical don't have enough bandwidth to pass those signals intact.

 

[nick1000000]

Plus it's one cord not two!

 

[agular]

I think I understand. That if I play a Blue Ray disk on my Blue Ray player the uncompressed audio will pass threw the HDMI cable and be reproduced on my Denon 5805 as what?
My Denon does not have Dolby/True-HD or DTS/Master.
Will the sound using an HDMI sound better on DD and DTS?

 

[Martiad3]

Will the sound using an HDMI sound better on DD and DTS?

No. All just 1's and 0's.

 

[Penny]

I think I understand. That if I play a Blue Ray disk on my Blue Ray player the uncompressed audio will pass threw the HDMI cable and be reproduced on my Denon 5805 as what?
My Denon does not have Dolby/True-HD or DTS/Master.
Will the sound using an HDMI sound better on DD and DTS?

I thought I was clear. It's the same signal; how could something that's exactly the same sound better or worse? They're the same!

 

[no. 5]

I think I understand. That if I play a Blue Ray disk on my Blue Ray player the uncompressed audio will pass threw the HDMI cable and be reproduced on my Denon 5805 as what?
My Denon does not have Dolby/True-HD or DTS/Master.

If your Blu-ray player decodes True HD, DTS Master, etc, it will send the receiver multi-channel LPCM. There will be no degradation in sound quality.

 

[Scryer_360]

Umm, am I missing something here? A digital coax line is not actually digital: its just a single high gauge analogue wire isn't it? I've used a component cord in place of a digital coax cord before (just ran out of time to run to the store), and it actually did work.

 

[Seth=L]

Umm, am I missing something here? A digital coax line is not actually digital: its just a single high gauge analogue wire isn't it? I've used a component cord in place of a digital coax cord before (just ran out of time to run to the store), and it actually did work.

No, that is incorrect. Digital Coaxial is part of the SPDIF transmission format, same as toslink (aka: Optical).

HDMI can be used for HD audio, but only on Blu-ray and HD DVD. With standard DVD players (omitting SACD and DVD-Audio on HDMI 1.2 complient players) and HD satalite and cable boxes there will be no audible difference between HDMI and Coaxial.

 

[MDS]

Umm, am I missing something here? A digital coax line is not actually digital: its just a single high gauge analogue wire isn't it? I've used a component cord in place of a digital coax cord before (just ran out of time to run to the store), and it actually did work.

It's correct that the wire itself isn't digital or analog - it's wire. Different types of wires are made with different characteristics according to a specification for the type of data they must carry. Component video cables work fine for digital audio because they are the same as digital coax cables; they both have a 75 Ohm characteristic impedance.

Digital audio is a sequence of numbers but wires don't actually carry numbers. The signal is analog but has been 'modulated' using any number of schemes. S/pdif defines the protocol and data format for digital audio transport over coax or optical cables and the modulation scheme it uses is called bi-phase mark.

 

[BiNiaRiS]

the big reason for hdmi now is for the high bandwidth audio formats found on blu ray and hd dvd and 1080p. if you aren't using 1080p or high definition movies i think you would be fine not using hdmi. also remember that dobly digital+ is higher bandwidth and requires an HDMI or analog solution. iirc toslink is limited to 684kb/s or so and most dd+ tracks are around 1500kb/s.