Hi,
As part of my project helping my friend build his home system, based on JRiver MC, we have an interesting situation: He owns several receivers, but all are older models. The newest of these has HDMI inputs and one HDMI output.
"Great!", I thought. Then I read the manual. This era of receiver can switch HDMI, but it can't use ANY AUDIO from HDMI! This is a Pioneer VSX-1016TX for the record. The manual notes that you need to connect RCA audio or digital (coax or optical) from any HDMI components, or the receiver will get no audio. Wow.
So, now if he wants to use MC for video and multi-channel audio, we need a different audio path. We could use a sound card with digital outputs. Or a sound card with 5.1 or 7.1 analog outputs. But there seem to be tradeoffs when doing multi-channel analog with this receiver: Essentially no processing is allowed except for volume level of the channels. Maybe this is a good thing? I've never used MC to do distance and level correction for multi-channel systems; though I've done it a BUNCH of times with AVRs and PrePros.
Of course the tradeoff with a digital connection is that it won't carry multi-channel uncompressed (PCM) audio. Only DD or DTS. I don't want to re-encode the audio. I'm iffy on whether I want to bitstream or not.
What do you guys think is the best way to do this?
Thanks!
Brian.