I have my media stored on a WD MyBook Live NAS and stream it to three different WDTV Live boxes in bedroom, livingroom, and music room. Each room has its’ own stereo/surround system as well. A substantial part of my music collection is hi-res downloads in either 24/96 or 24/192 bitdepth/bitrate files. I take the digital optical output from the WDTV Live and run it into a DAC(Schiit Bifrost) and then on to my stereo. I noticed that the DAC was choking on the 24/192 files. I called Schiit about it and was told that the Toslink spec(optical) only specifies up to 24/96 resolution. If I wanted to play back my 24/192 files through the Schiit, I would need to deliver the signal via coax cable. WDTV Live has no coax output. Bugger! My question is this - I can purchase an optical to coax converter fairly cheaply, but is the optical out on the WDTV Live going to pass the 24/192 signal??? In other words, what are the audio specs/limitations of the digital out on the WDTV Live??? I have searched the owners manual as well as on-line documents and could not find audio technical specifications anywhere for the device. All that is mentioned is the file formats(flac, Ogg etc…) that it would decode. What are the bitrate and bit depth limitations via optical on the WDTV Live?? There is no problem with 24/96 files via optical out. I can stream 24/192 wirelessly to my Oppo BDP-95 via wireless USB without issue. Since the new firmware update allows DTS HD Master Audio passthrough, which is a hi-def compressionless format, I’m assuming the optical out will pass 24/192 data stream. Is this correct???
Thanks in advance for any input you folks may have on this topic.
