[Typhoon859]

Would anyone happen to know of something designed simply to take a Dolby Digital or DTS signal through S/PDIF (optical or coaxial), convert it to stereo PCM, and output back through S/PDIF?  Thanks in advance!

If you're simply curious to know why I need such an application, it is to have my audio playback device output to the receiver through HDMI with any audio format of choice while simultaneously having the audio go through a device which can rip the audio stream from the HDMI and send it through a S/PDIF connection. The problem is, the digital mixer I'm sending this audio to only supports PCM (as well as the headphone DAC/amp it further gets routed to) and I don't want to have to limit the signal going into my receiver to 2-channel PCM audio. The receiver itself has the ability to pass the signal through at the HDMI output, but that's all.  The thing which rips the audio signal from the HDMI link has the ability to rip the regular compressed stream from the "TrueHD" or "DTS-HD MA" signal it receives and it obviously it also has the ability to pass through the already compressed streams which would be transmitted, so that's not an issue. Unfortunately, however, I do in fact need to have anything over 2ch PCM disabled from the source output regardless.
 
Well anyway, the only things I could find when looking for such a solution were converters with built in DACs which have the unwanted additional step of converting the signal to analog, with no options alternatively without that (which is essentially all that's needed, just instead with a basic S/PDIF output).

 

[Typhoon859]

I would've guessed that someone may have also had a need for this just perhaps in alternate circumstances (some of which I've also run into), like for instance, wanting to use an alternate DAC in a setup you otherwise may already have. I imagine people might have at least brainstormed on this issue considering the prominence of this step in the signal chain (decoding proprietary compressed formats into PCM). The application of this external to any one multi-tasking device certainly gives room for some potentially interesting modular designs/setups, as already some examples were given of. It's a shame that there aren't more exclusively digital devices for digital applications. Perhaps that's the reason something as useful as this may not exist, but I was hoping someone might chime in and show me something similar or something I simply missed when searching - perhaps have some legitimate alternative idea maybe?

Thanks guys!