Optical to Coax connection.
Discussion
Moved house recently, and unpacked a 20 year old Kenwood 8500 AV amp, Pioneer DVD player, and Mission 752 floor standers that had been in the loft for a few years. Surprisingly they all seem to work fine. However my TV has an optical output and the amp doesn't have that input, what's a decent way to connect them?
Mark V GTD said:
Doesn't look like it so it will be one of these then -https://www.amazon.co.uk/Converter-Techole-Aluminu...
Even with the volume up it still sounds like it did years ago. I was expecting to have to buy a new amp, but I'll stick with it while it's working.Mark V GTD said:
May be dumb question - but how did this amp produce multi-channel sound without a digital input from a DVD player?
It's the era of Dolby Surround (as decoded by Pro-Logic), and when you wanted, a dabble with the DSP effects - Church, Stadium, Jazz Club etcFor those with the means, there would be US NTSC LaserDisc with AC3 sound via an RF output on the player. Big amps from Yamaha (DSP-A1), and maybe Denon and Pioneer would have had RF demodulators built in. The A1 certainly did.
UK LaserDisc releases were limited to Dolby Pro-Logic which only needs a stereo connection for decoding. Towards the end of the LD era I think some UK discs might have had AC3 (a precursor to DD5.1) and the players had either and optical or a coaxial digital output. Some players had both.
I bought the amp new from Richer Sounds after 1995, it was probably old stock. I used it with a Laser disc player and imported discs, films like The Terminator and Jurassic park did sound pretty good through 6 speakers . I had a Yamaha active sub woofer, and ran the rear speakers from another kenwood amp. With a 32" Sony there was more sound than picture.
Edited by blade7 on Tuesday 13th April 18:33
blade7 said:
Moved house recently, and unpacked a 20 year old Kenwood 8500 AV amp, Pioneer DVD player, and Mission 752 floor standers that had been in the loft for a few years. Surprisingly they all seem to work fine. However my TV has an optical output and the amp doesn't have that input, what's a decent way to connect them?
does the telly have a headphone jack? One of these cables in the required length will do the job if it has www.amazon.co.uk/3-5mm-Phono-Stereo-Audio-Cable/dp...stevoknevo said:
does the telly have a headphone jack? One of these cables in the required length will do the job if it has www.amazon.co.uk/3-5mm-Phono-Stereo-Audio-Cable/dp...
This is from the TV online manual. Any downside to using the headphone jack over a DAC?
Mark V GTD said:
Ah right - I had not appreciated you could get Pro-logic from a line level/phono input - thanks for that.
Yeah, Dolby Surround can be encoded in to analogue stereo or digital stereo. VHS cassettes of commercial films would often have a Dolby Surround logo. Playing these back on a Hi-Fi stereo VHS deck through something like that Kenwood or any DPL equipped AV receiver/amp would give a centre channel and single rear channel for rears split in to two as well as the main left and right channels. The info for the centre and surround channel is matrixed (hidden) in such a way that it's "invisible" when played back on a basic mono or stereo TV or stereo Hi-Fi. Dolby Surround is still with us today. Many of the non-HD channels on all the different TV platforms carry Dolby Surround for a good proportion of their programmes. One that sticks in my mind is The Simpsons. Watch the end credits. Dolby Surround would survive the broadcast stage in analogue (with NICAM Stereo for analogue terrestrial) and is also carried in the stereo signal for digital TV (Freeview/Freesat/Sky/Virgin).
Dolby Surround is how the signal is encoded, but its decoding is done either with Dolby Pro-Logic (DPL) or Dolby Pro-Logic II (DPL-II). The latter is much better. The source signal is still the same, it's just the decoding algorithms are much cleverer. DPL-II makes stereo rear channel surround rather than mono, and, AFAIK, there's no 7kHz audio frequency ceiling with DPL-II.
dvs_dave said:
Headphone jack to stereo RCA is the way to do it. Did this all the time back in the day to connect tv’s to amps. It’ll also allow you to control the volume via the tv remote.
Just check if the headphone level is controlled on the main volume buttons rather than one buried in the menu. Gassing Station | Home Cinema & Hi-Fi | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff