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View Full Version : SA 8000HD Digital Out "Other"?


edesilva
01-04-05, 10:22 PM
I've been using a SD 8000HD and swapped some stuff to get rid of my multichannel setup in favor of a very good 2 channel setup... I realize that may be anathema here, but I wasn't really getting that much enjoyment out of multichannel and it was cluttering up my room.

Anyway, the digital feeds from my CD/DVD, XBox, and Audiotron work fine, but I was getting just white noise out of the digital out of the 8000HD. I switched the digital output on the box from "Dolby Digital" to "Other," thinking "Other" = PCM, but no dice. After some hours of frustration, I swapped the box for my SA 3250HD, and (setting digital output to "Other") it works fine. Except the 3250 doesn't have a DVR function. And the 3250 only outputs digital for channels above 100 or so (I'm on a Comcast system).

So, WTF does come out of 8000HD when set to "Other"? I'm wondering if my box is a dud--can someone see if, by setting the output to "Other," they get PCM out? Any other ideas? Anyone know of a cheap device that will turn Dolby into PCM? Unfortunately, with my new audio rig, I can't even to analog passthrough--it's a digital only setup (dCS Purcell->dCS Delius->ARC VT100 amps)...

edesilva
01-05-05, 10:58 AM
OK, I think I may have figured out the problem... If I read the SA website right, the 8000HD is supposed to put out MPEG-1 when "Other" is selected for the digital audio output. What is MPEG-1??? Am I right that it is not PCM digital like CD output?

Also found a kludge-y solution, which is using a Ratshack $30 format converter to translate the analog stereo outputs to digital. It offends my sensibilities to have D to A to D to A in my system, however, so if anyone has any better ideas...