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DAC for Downmixing Surround Sound?

post #1 of 4
5/23/11 at 3:56pm
Thread Starter 
I prefer a clean stereo output over surround sound and I thus never bothered with Dolby Surround and what else there is.

Now one problem is that my TV does not output DTS sound. My PS3 can convert the sound to stereo, but the sound is not that good. I'd rather have a dedicated DAC that supports DTS, AC3 and whatever that stuff is called, and provides my speaker amp and my headphone amp with a clean and thin analog stereo sound.

Of course the main purpose of the DAC is to do well with material that already is in stereo, like a future SACD-player, as music is more important to me.

So, is there such a device? All DACs that people talk about around here do not support 5.1 formats.
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post #2 of 4
5/26/11 at 10:04pm

Hi,

I'm not sure I understand your full situation but I was interested in the topic as well. So are you looking to go out of your PS3 as your source? And you are needing to send the surround sound to something, yet still retain a stereo signal for your TV or headphone amp?

It sounds like what you may want is a Surround Sound Receiver of some sort.You'd want something to decode your surround sound and send it to your speakers but that also had a dedicated stereo out that you could send to your TV or headphone amp. I think most receivers would accommodate this. If you look at this example, it has your speaker connections on the right and on the left you can see a VCR/DVR out which you could use to feed into your headphone amp or TV or whatever.

 

Back of reciever

 

If you don't have or need the surround speakers, then you could probably find a simpler decoder I'm sure.

 

As for down-mixing to stereo...well most Dolby Files are encoded with a mix for stereo out if needed. I don't know if your PS3 is using this or just down-mixing it by itself but I've made a few Surround sound mixes for my job and my experience is that the AC3 file already has instructions for stereo output for the player to use with it's analog stereo out if it has one (almost all do).

 

Of course if your source is Music and it's likely that it's already in stereo, you can just use the LEFT Front and RIGHT front channels from any decoder and that should pass on the stereo signal fine, no downmix needed. That is of course unless your decoder is in Pro Logic mode which upmixes your stereo source to surround.

 

 

 


Edited by jaeming - 5/26/11 at 10:17pm
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post #3 of 4
5/31/11 at 11:54pm
Thread Starter 
Thank you for your time!

I was not recommended a surround receiver because it's said they don't do well with stereo signals. If that's not true, that would be a good choice, though.

However, I wasn't looking for an amp at all. So I don't need a speaker amp or 5.1 channels out. I just want the DAC from the receiver and just give me an unamplified stereo out.

I see many people have dedicated DACs around here, but I haven't seen one which handles surround formats on the side.
Edited by Ultrazino - 5/31/11 at 11:56pm
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post #4 of 4
6/1/11 at 4:09am

According to Sony's info here, The PS3 output over Optical can do Stereo as well as 5.1 Dolby. If you do not want the 5.1 at all, then in theory, any dac with an optical in should work.

I've also found threads on this forum who mention using a DAC with their PS3's: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/421246/v-dac-with-ps3-why-not

If you do want the 5.1 as well...I don't know of a dac that does both 5.1 and Stereo right off hand but I'm sure there is one out there. I've seen dedicated 5.1 decoders for sure.

Hope this helps..

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