O.D.Yeo, no thank you! In my desperation, I found
THIS!Look who made the initial post
And as it grows in my mind that this is an industry issue (I've seen the restrictions on the output specs of the DVD Audio format), there were already people who shares my sentiments.
But look which player DID NOT FOLLOW the industry spec! Oppo 980
So thank you
To those who don't want to read all the posts...
Three things about this discussion:
1) A few years ago when I was arguing the side of the MLP copyright protection on DVD-A (i.e you can't get PPCM out via coax) I was proven wrong by the weakest of opponents, a very cheap Samusng DVD-A player (can't even remember the name). Hell, the user manaul even stated, in broken English, that DVD-A was available via the coax output. Sure freaking enough, it was sending 96k and 192k out that damn coax (unsure if it was 24 bit though, still am). Fast forward to today's machines. Cheap universals like my Oppo 980 (not my other more expensive ones) send up to 192k out the SPDIF output too! I prove it by setting LPCM for 192k in the Oppo menu, then sending it to a DAC (tested Berkeley Alpha, Weiss Minerva/DAC2, Bryston BDA-1 while I demoed them, for grins and giggles) and sure enough the 192K LED lights up. It tells me that digital coax is capable of 192k...again, I've NO CLUE if it's down "sampled" (truncated I guess is a better term) to 16 bits, but it sounds great via the above mentioned DACs.
2) Combine no 1 above with another experiment I did, similar to Sean and Rick. I took hirez files like the HRX demo disc (24/176k) and various 24/192 files I've downloaded and I decided to try and get them to my 192k-capable DACs (see above) via something other than a computer. I took these files and authored them/burnt them into a DVD-Audio DVD-R disc via software called DVD-Audio SoLo (it lets you do 5 discs during a no-risk trial version) and, voila, the Oppo 980 sends 176k (HRX) and 192K (Kent Poon Jazz downloads, etc.) authored files to the DACs via good ole' coax out. I GOTTA believe these are not 16/176 but in fact 24/176 (although the Oppo could still be truncating them).
3) What about the $98 miracle box out on the Net that's been linked in a couple of these discussions already over on CA or Steve's (Hoffman) forum? It's a "simple" HDMI audio/video splitter that says it takes up to 192k Blu-Ray audio and splits it off HDMi (needs to be decoded in player of course) and sends it to digital coax of this $98 box.!! Anybody seen it or tried it?
Thx
Ted B