Audio output from films to both HDMI and optical?

monk3y · January 4, 2011, 12:12pm

The majority of the time, I watch films using the speakers on the TV using the HDMI stereo output.

Sometimes I like to use the AV receiver to play the sound using the optical output.

So far, I have had to go into setup and change the audio settings each time in order to make this happen. Is there a setting I am missing or can the Live Hub really not output audio to the two connectors at the same time?

bitfiddler · January 4, 2011, 5:45pm

Dosn’t solve your situation, but I found it outputs sound via the stereo RCA jacks simultaneous with HDMI. But of course that doesn’t give 5.1 sound.

My TV has optical audio OUT to go to a surround-sound receiver/amp. Isn’t that the typical way to do it? Hub (or DVD player) to TV via HDMI, then TV to surround amp via optical?

(But yes I can see reasons to take the optical autio directly to the receiver/amp - Like for playing Pandora music and you could turn the TV off for a while.)

monk3y · January 4, 2011, 10:13pm

Thanks. Yes, my TV also has optical out, but rather annoyingly it only puts DTS or multichannel audio through when watching cable TV. All other audio is put through, but only in stereo so the optical jack on the back of my live hub is my only option. (Still swapping audio settings for the time being)

spookster86 · January 15, 2011, 2:16am

In judging from your replys here… you won’t be able to answer my question.

The whole point of HDMI is that is carries both audio and video. If you are using the optical cable, then you are limiting yourslef to 24bit/48khz audio in up to 8 discrete channels (that’s a limit of the protocol). And that’s pretty good (it’s better than CD quality), but it’s nothing compared to the quality you can transfer over HDMI. HDMI allows you to transfer 24bit/192khz audio in up to 8 discrete channels. This is a literal night/day difference in quality. If you are watching Blue Ray quality movies and only using the optical cable, you are severely lowering the quality of your audio playback.

My question is, will the WD live hub send full 24bit/192khz audio out of the HDMI port so I can plug that into my receiver to get high res audio, and then take another HDMI cable from my receiver to my HD TV to get HD quality video. This is the ideal way to hook it up. Is this possible?

In other words, I want to play DVD-A quality audio off of my HD Live Hub. Will it pass that info along to my Reciever??

b0y0ng99 · January 15, 2011, 3:23am

I am not sure about this because I don’t have a receiver capable of hd audio so I could not really test it but based on what I’ve read, I think hd audio will pass through the hdmi from the hub. One feature of the hub is the dolby digital plus, which can only pass through hdmi and cannot pass through optical cable so to take advantage ot this feature, audio data has to pass through hdmi. Although, I’ve read in other posts that there is a problem playing Dolby True HD in the hub. As for the DTS-HD amd DTS-MA, its not capable from what I’ve read because of some licensing issues.