Thread: No audio pass through

What exactly does that mean? My friend wants to get a low budget Home Theater reciever with at least 2 HDMI inputs. A lot of them say "no audio pass through". Why would you not want audio to go through HDMI?

One cable connection.

Advanced audio decoding for Blu-ray such as accepting MPCM, TrueHD and DTS Master.

There are plenty of inexpensive receivers that accept audio over HDMI.

S~

Originally Posted by stimpson

What exactly does that mean? My friend wants to get a low budget Home Theater reciever with at least 2 HDMI inputs. A lot of them say "no audio pass through". Why would you not want audio to go through HDMI?

The least expensive receivers will simply provide a switching path for video from the source to the television. However, they won't decode the audio from the HDMI. This forces you to add a second connection, either analog pairs or a TOSLINK optical cable from the source to the receiver.

As Stimpson said, the optical connection does not have the bandwidth to pas through the best audio formats. The analog connections don't even handle proper 5.1, but rely on the 40 year old phase matrix technology (Dolby surround) to get rear channels.

I agree with Stimpson. You can find receivers out there that will decode the audio formats at reasonable prices. Look at the Onkyo 60X line, the Denon 19XX, and similar units from Yamaha and Pioneer.

Any receiver that accepts HDMI 1.3, will pass decoded audio in LPCM.

Originally Posted by Paul Wozniak

Any receiver that accepts HDMI 1.3, will pass decoded audio in LPCM.

I don't think that is entirely true Paul. It is also very dependent on what he means by "pass".

If he means pass the audio stream to the receiver, then no, the cheapest receivers will not pass the audio through the HDMI. That is still true with the newest generation.

If he means pass through to whatever monitor is switched through the receiver, then perhaps. A couple of years ago, they were stripping off the audio when sending it on to the monitor as a 'feature'

Seems pointless to have HDMI without the audio.

I'll probably be replacing the JVC RX8020V in my bedroom with another Onkyo, though probably not another 805. Nothing wrong with the receiver, just for simplicities sake. Too many cables now, too complicated.

Originally Posted by Paul Wozniak

Any receiver that accepts HDMI 1.3, will pass decoded audio in LPCM.

Unfortunately, no. Many of the inexpensive ones do not.

S~

Originally Posted by jayn_j

If he means pass the audio stream to the receiver, then no, the cheapest receivers will not pass the audio through the HDMI. That is still true with the newest generation.

Yes. That's what I meant.

Originally Posted by navychop

Seems pointless to have HDMI without the audio.

Exactly!!!!!!!

Those receivers probably don't accept HDMI 1.3.