Is hdmi a must have for home theater?

I have a yamaha DSP-A1 but i'm getting lossless thru RCA's with a sony bluray player. Am I still missing out??

monterey10-17-2009 6:04am

audiojan Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 436 posts 10-22-2009 at 07:32am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete I would agree that HDMI is not a necessity. Mulitchannel out from a high quality Blu-Ray player can sound fantastic. For video, HDMI does offer some very real benefits though, but no need to route that through a receiver anyway... best quality will be directly from source to video (TV or projector). I have decided to skip out on HDMI audio since I love the sound of my Krell HTS7.1. I route all HDMI through my DVDO video processor. For BR, the HDMI video is passed through the processor (nothing but a switcher then) and sound through multichannel RCA. Sound is glorious!
audiojan Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 436 posts 10-24-2009 at 10:30am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete The issue really comes down to where you get the best decoding... a higher end SACD player may actually sound better connected to the pre/pro or receiver via analog connections (due to superior decoding). A lower end SACD player could be much improved if you use it as a digital transport only and connect it via HDMI to do the decoding in the pre/pro or receiver... For the least amount of money compared to a reasonable sound quality, HDMI does have some benefits... but for high end audio, you could actually end up sticking to analog and get better results.