# 722 and Optical audio



## insimbi (Jun 2, 2006)

I was reorganizing my wiring today and unplugged the optical (toslink) cable from my 722 receiver to my Sony audio receiver and noticed the sound was still working (surround even). Why would this be happening? Do I not need this optical cable at all? Kind of weird I thought.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

If you are using HDMI, then that carries both video and audio.

If you aren't using HDMI, then you would have to use either the analog outputs (red + white) or the optical cable.


----------



## insimbi (Jun 2, 2006)

Stewart Vernon said:


> If you are using HDMI, then that carries both video and audio.
> 
> If you aren't using HDMI, then you would have to use either the analog outputs (red + white) or the optical cable.


I am using HDMI, but want the optical for my audio. Is there a way to set this in the receiver somewhere?


----------



## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

You can't turn HDMI audio off, but the 722 receiver will be outputting the digital audio on both HDMI and optical. If you meant configuring something in your A/V receiver, then the answer is we have no idea, but likely it is possible.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

insimbi said:


> I am using HDMI, but want the optical for my audio. Is there a way to set this in the receiver somewhere?


Dumb question time...

Why do you want to also connect optical when you are already using HDMI and that will already deliver the audio (as you've proven by disconnecting the optical cable)?


----------



## Wilf (Oct 15, 2008)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Dumb question time...
> 
> Why do you want to also connect optical when you are already using HDMI and that will already deliver the audio (as you've proven by disconnecting the optical cable)?


I have another dumb question - is HDMI audio output digital or analog? Where is the DAC done? Not all DAC's are of equal quality in my experience. The best ones are big bucks.


----------



## dmspen (Dec 1, 2006)

HDMI is digital, just like optical. DAC processing takes place in your AV receiver. If you are running HDMI from your DVR to your AVR, you will not gain a single extra bit of anything by using optical. In fact, you lose the control signals that also run across HDMI.


----------



## mdavej (Jan 31, 2007)

insimbi said:


> I am using HDMI, but want the optical for my audio. Is there a way to set this in the receiver somewhere?


The only reason to use optical is if you have an older receiver that doesn't have HDMI at all.


----------



## Wilf (Oct 15, 2008)

mdavej said:


> The only reason to use optical is if you have an older receiver that doesn't have HDMI at all.


Actually this is what I was thinking. Then you have a choice between using the TV for the DAC or the AV receiver for DAC. I am probably picking at nits here, since Dolby is a compressed audio format, and the quality of the DAC doesn't matter that much.


----------



## insimbi (Jun 2, 2006)

Ok, so my TV is connected directly to my 722 via HDMI. My 722 is not connected to my audio receiver by any other means than an optical (toslink) cable. 
If I unplug the toslink cable, audio is still coming from the audio receiver. How is that possible? If I don't need the toslink cable that's great, just trying to understand how it's working?


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

insimbi said:


> Ok, so my TV is connected directly to my 722 via HDMI. My 722 is not connected to my audio receiver by any other means than an optical (toslink) cable.
> If I unplug the toslink cable, audio is still coming from the audio receiver. How is that possible? If I don't need the toslink cable that's great, just trying to understand how it's working?


Ok... that helps a bit to understand where you are coming from. IF you don't have an audio receiver that accepts HDMI, then I get why you were trying to use optical.

IF you are still getting audio from your receiver... then you must have an optical cable from your HDTV to your receiver (which you would need in order to use the HDTV built-in tuner and have audio).

Depending on your HDTV... I'll use mine as an example... audio out from your HDTV to your audio receiver might vary depending on the source. My HDTV outputs the received dolby digital whatever for its own built-in tuner... BUT downconverts other input (like input from a Blu-ray player) to 2.0 channel stereo.

So.. in my case, the audio from the HDTV would be inferior than the audio directly from my Dish receiver in some cases.

For your scenario... you may be better off keeping your optical cable connected directly to the audio receiver from your Dish receiver... BUT the Dish receiver will continue to output the audio on both optical and HDMI at the same time.

I do not know how (or if) you can configure your audio receiver to use one and ignore the other. That's a question for your audio receiver manual... though I would hope that it is simply configurable by choosing the input that you plug the receiver cable into would do that trick.


----------



## Orion9 (Jan 31, 2011)

insimbi, do you have other devices like a DVD or BD player? If so, how do you select the input device? If you do it via the TV source selector, then you probably have everything routed through your TV and the audio receiver gets the selected audio from the TV.

To use audio straight from the devices to the receiver, you would have to be selecting inputs via the receiver. If it's an audio only receiver, that would require selecting the video via the TV and the audio via the receiver.


----------



## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

Do you have cables connecting the TV's audio outputs running to the AV receiver? That's about the only way you could still have audio from the AV receiver.


----------



## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

BattleZone said:


> Do you have cables connecting the TV's audio outputs running to the AV receiver? That's about the only way you could still have audio from the AV receiver.


That's what Stewart pointed out ... yesterday.


----------



## poyzin (Jan 19, 2009)

Do you have an HDMI cable from HDMI out on your AV receiver to your HDMI in on your TV? If so, then are they both relatively new? Perhaps what you are seeing is the Audio Return Channel feature of the 1.4 spec of HDMI. ANY input to any of the TV's HDMI inputs will be sent to the A/V receiver's HDMI output via the HDMI (usually 1) INPUT if they both are 1.4 compliant AND you have a 1.4 compliant cable. It's actually kind of a cool way to wire multiple devices if everything meets the relatively new standard.

If the above is the case, you can set your HDTV to NOT output audio over the HDMI cable although I don't know why you would want to. True, my optical out on my TV DOES downconvert the digital signal to 2 channel but the Audio Return Channel on the HDMI is a pass-through and would allow whatever processing you wanted to be handled by your receiver.


----------



## saberfly (Apr 5, 2010)

On my newer Onkyo it is totally flexible. I pick an input then i pick where i want the video to come from then where i want the audio to come from. Its really a nice feature. Yours might have something like that.


----------

