Any benefit to digital audio cable (coaxial or optical)...

[CaZeek]

Hello,
I know not too many talk about audio, but is there any real benefit to using digital audio cables as opposed to RCA for broadcast cable, digital cable, or VHS/S-VHS sources? Basically, when is capturing / playback with digital audio cables useful? This might be a stupid question.. so I'm prepared for "it's always better, idiot" type answers.

[tedkunich]

Hello,
I know not too many talk about audio, but is there any real benefit to using digital audio cables as opposed to RCA for broadcast cable, digital cable, or VHS/S-VHS sources? Basically, when is capturing / playback with digital audio cables useful? This might be a stupid question.. so I'm prepared for "it's always better, idiot" type answers.

If you have a SPDIF connection, by all means, use it - your audio will not have to go through a D/A -> A/D conversion, you will not have to worry about record levels, and if you are lucky, will not have A/V sync issues. When capping my LD's, my audio and video are in step and I never have an issue of the audio and video getting out of sync as the PC'c audio is locked to the source clock via the SPDIF.

T

[edDV]

Most of the time S/PDIF (PCM, DTS, various Dobly...) type cables are better assuming the equipment support them but what VHS/S-VHS sources use these cables? Have I missed something?

It all comes down to how the signals are digitized.

[CaZeek]

What I mean is if the source comes from an analog source, such as VHS, S-VHS, or standard cable, is there any benefit to playback via digital audio cable (after audio encoded to AC3 and authored to a DVD-R). As far as capturing, the only devices that have a digital audio out are my cable box and my DVD player (seems logical ). I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to audio, so sorry if I'm a little unclear.

Basically, what sources acutally use digital audio? Do the non-digital channels use it? Is there a benefit to using the digital audio out when playing a DVD that's source is analog audio. It seems like there should be a benefit, because the audio is digital, but as I said, I pretty much know nothing when it comes to hardware type audio issues.

[edDV]

Well, still unclear but here goes.

The critical issue is where and how the analog audio is converted to digital.

If that point is during DVD authoring then the quality of the digital audio is determined at that point. Analog sources must be captured to digital, optionally cleaned up and then encoded for the DVD.

From then on, both digital and analog outputs will come from the same DVD digital source. The digital connection to the audio amp system should be cleaner than the analog RCA connections but if the destination has only analog inputs, use the RCA connectors

If your cable box has digital out and your computer has digital in, that is the best way to capture but most people are still capturing analog and only sending the digital audio to the AC-3 receiver.