Onkyo TX-SR875 zone 2... are you kidding?

[ThA tRiXtA]

So I have the AVR I mentioned above.

I pre-ran speaker wire from my HT room to my upstairs living room for 2 speakers so I could listen to music up there, sourced from my CD player.

I have been messing around and around with it this morning for hours trying to get it to work until I had the bright idea to read the manual (who would have thought that a book made to tell you how it works would have the answers?!) and lo and behold it states in a small and unassuming little block of text off to the side that the AVR will not output any digital signals to Zone 2 or Zone 3???

Now I don't know about you guys, but I find this absolutely ridiculous. Who in this day and age uses analog interconnects except for a turntable or something of that nature? Is there some sort of technical limitation that I am unaware of that dictates a receiver cannot take the signal from my CD player that is connected with a digital optical cable and amplify it to the speakers upstairs? Is it something to do with this HDCP BS again?

I mean, it already has the signal in it's path in the AVR, but they have designed/engineered it so it just won't route it through a different set of speaker jacks? I am seriously surprised (disappointed?) that such a popular and technology laden AVR would lack that ability.

So now on to the million dollar connection. I don't even own a set of red and white analog RCA connectors, but I will pick some up tomorrow when I am out. How much of a difference am I going to notice going from listening to my CD player connected with a BJC digital optical cable to listening upstairs in zone 2 connected with the old red and white RCA connector?

Will there be a significant loss of sound resolution / quality? Currently the output signal is PCM 44.1 kHz, what will it be using the rca cable? I am rather unfamiliar with the limitations of using my CD players analog output. If it's going to suck compared to the digital interconnect, I'd rather know now, so don't sugarcoat it.

As for the RCA red and white cable, are there any things I should look for when buying? Or is it just the same old standard, the shorter the cable the better, etc etc?

Thanks,

signed: an unimpressed Onkyo fan at this moment...

 

[lsiberian]

So I have the AVR I mentioned above.

I pre-ran speaker wire from my HT room to my upstairs living room for 2 speakers so I could listen to music up there, sourced from my CD player.

I have been messing around and around with it this morning for hours trying to get it to work until I had the bright idea to read the manual (who would have thought that a book made to tell you how it works would have the answers?!) and lo and behold it states in a small and unassuming little block of text off to the side that the AVR will not output any digital signals to Zone 2 or Zone 3???

Now I don't know about you guys, but I find this absolutely ridiculous. Who in this day and age uses analog interconnects except for a turntable or something of that nature? Is there some sort of technical limitation that I am unaware of that dictates a receiver cannot take the signal from my CD player that is connected with a digital optical cable and amplify it to the speakers upstairs? Is it something to do with this HDCP BS again?

I mean, it already has the signal in it's path in the AVR, but they have designed/engineered it so it just won't route it through a different set of speaker jacks? I am seriously surprised (disappointed?) that such a popular and technology laden AVR would lack that ability.

So now on to the million dollar connection. I don't even own a set of red and white analog RCA connectors, but I will pick some up tomorrow when I am out. How much of a difference am I going to notice going from listening to my CD player connected with a BJC digital optical cable to listening upstairs in zone 2 connected with the old red and white RCA connector?

Will there be a significant loss of sound resolution / quality? Currently the output signal is PCM 44.1 kHz, what will it be using the rca cable? I am rather unfamiliar with the limitations of using my CD players analog output. If it's going to suck compared to the digital interconnect, I'd rather know now, so don't sugarcoat it.

As for the RCA red and white cable, are there any things I should look for when buying? Or is it just the same old standard, the shorter the cable the better, etc etc?

Thanks,

signed: an unimpressed Onkyo fan at this moment...

It doesn't matter.

Either way you get 2 channels. And all you have is 2 channels anyway.

If you hear a difference it's probably in your head.

On a side note. The RCA hookups carry more signal than the digital coaxial which is essentially compressed. In reality they are 2 cables vs 1 cable.

 

[Highbar]

Most receivers that I know of will only do zone 2 from analog. I think it's more to do with the fact that receivers are only setup for one digital operation at a time and that is setup for the main speaker outs. No worries though as lsiberian already said it shouldn't affect the sound at all. As long as it's a decent cd player it should have a good set of D/A converters in it.

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Yep, very common to have to run a redundant analog signal for any zone outside of zone1. I have a billion cables secondary to that.

 

[MDS]

Will there be a significant loss of sound resolution / quality? Currently the output signal is PCM 44.1 kHz, what will it be using the rca cable?

The resolution will still be 16/44.1. The CD player did the conversion from PCM to analog and the receiver just amplifies that analog signal.

In order to send the PCM to zone 2 the receiver would need additional DACs and that adds cost and is not done. Only a few costly mega bucks receivers support digital signals to zone 2.

The RCA hookups carry more signal than the digital coaxial which is essentially compressed. In reality they are 2 cables vs 1 cable.

Not exactly. PCM is uncompressed and in the case of 16/44.1 from a CD it will be 44,100 16 bit samples for every second of audio (times the number of channels). When transported digitally it will be encoded in s/pdif format but nothing is lost. DD/DTS are lossy compression formats but they are already compressed before they hit the s/pdif interface.

 

[lsiberian]

Not exactly. PCM is uncompressed and in the case of 16/44.1 from a CD it will be 44,100 16 bit samples for every second of audio (times the number of channels). When transported digitally it will be encoded in s/pdif format but nothing is lost. DD/DTS are lossy compression formats but they are already compressed before they hit the s/pdif interface.

IOTW there is no difference.

 

[ThA tRiXtA]

Hey guys,

First off, thanks for all your input and advice. I honestly was not aware that anything outside of zone 1 was automatically limited to analog only signal.

One of the things I love about this hobby is you never stop learning about how everything works.

So if I recall correctly, I have my PS3 box buried somewhere in my house and it has a red and white RCA cable in it I think. It's a very thin cheaply made cable with friction fit terminations, but they don't clamp on to the jack very tightly.

Will it be good enough, or should I invest in something of a little more quality like this product shown from BJC:

On a side note, I don't know about the DAC's in my CD player (it's just a Sony 400 disc player) so I am pretty confident in saying they are probably not of very good quality, however the DAC's in my AVR are high quality Burr-Brown DAC's which I understand are supposed to be pretty good.

Why would the CD player be performing the conversion when my AVR would be much better suited to the task? Would there be any way to confirm which is doing what?

Thanks again guys,

 

[MDS]

Why would the CD player be performing the conversion when my AVR would be much better suited to the task? Would there be any way to confirm which is doing what?

Because you are using the analog inputs on the receiver. Those inputs expect an analog waveform which is then amplified. The digital inputs expect a stream of data which represents the waveform but is not the actual waveform itself. Digital is data which must be processed and converted to analog. Analog is analogous to the real world - it is the actual waveform you can hear.

I don't recall if the receiver's 'display' button will show nothing but the decoder in use (eg. PLII) or '---' to indicate analog (my receiver is currently disconnected at the moment).

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Not sure the PS3 is part of your plan for zone 2 but it's not going to work if it is. You would have to go into the PS3 and change the output from HDMI to analog everytime you wanted to change zones. Everything else should work fine with a redundant connection.

 

[lsiberian]

Hey guys,

First off, thanks for all your input and advice. I honestly was not aware that anything outside of zone 1 was automatically limited to analog only signal.

One of the things I love about this hobby is you never stop learning about how everything works.

So if I recall correctly, I have my PS3 box buried somewhere in my house and it has a red and white RCA cable in it I think. It's a very thin cheaply made cable with friction fit terminations, but they don't clamp on to the jack very tightly.

Will it be good enough, or should I invest in something of a little more quality like this product shown from BJC:

On a side note, I don't know about the DAC's in my CD player (it's just a Sony 400 disc player) so I am pretty confident in saying they are probably not of very good quality, however the DAC's in my AVR are high quality Burr-Brown DAC's which I understand are supposed to be pretty good.

Why would the CD player be performing the conversion when my AVR would be much better suited to the task? Would there be any way to confirm which is doing what?

Thanks again guys,

If you have old component cables those will work as well.

Any RCA type cable will work.

 

[Highbar]

Not sure the PS3 is part of your plan for zone 2 but it's not going to work if it is. You would have to go into the PS3 and change the output from HDMI to analog everytime you wanted to change zones. Everything else should work fine with a redundant connection.

I think he just asking if the cable that came with it will work. I'm pretty sure it will as long as it has RCA connectors on each end.

A more expensive cable may work a little better but I can't imagine by a huge amout. As far as the cd players DAC's they should be fine, I wouldn't worry about it.