Hi,

I am looking to get a home cinema system and have noticed that my Cambridge Audio DVD players already has 5.1 outputs on the back.

Does this mean it has an amp already in it and all i need is a set of speakers, or do i still need to buy a seperate amp?

cheers

[mjcairney]

You need a separate amp/receiver with 5.1 decoding - all the DVD player does is pass a Dolby Digital (DD) or DTS bitstream signal to the amp for decoding and amplification.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Martin.

[mossym]

wouldn't think you're right there, i'd say his dvd player is doing the decoding for the analog outputs. they are only line level outputs though, they do need to be hooked up to 5.1 inputs on am amp.

however by using these you don't need to the amp to decode anything, you are only using the power stage

[bu5ter]

Originally Posted by mossym

wouldn't think you're right there, i'd say his dvd player is doing the decoding for the analog outputs. they are only line level outputs though, they do need to be hooked up to 5.1 inputs on am amp.

however by using these you don't need to the amp to decode anything, you are only using the power stage

Thats right in theory you could use any amp as all it is doing is physically driving the speakers so if you wanted a real high quality setup you could use 3 2-channel stereo amps to drive the 6 speakers....

That being said most people still use the optical/coax output on the dvd players instead and feed a relevant home cinema amp which does all this for you anyway and its only one cable as opposed to 6.

[mjcairney]

Originally Posted by mossym

wouldn't think you're right there, i'd say his dvd player is doing the decoding for the analog outputs. they are only line level outputs though, they do need to be hooked up to 5.1 inputs on am amp.

however by using these you don't need to the amp to decode anything, you are only using the power stage

Yes, you're right - I must admit I didn't read the first post correctly (), but I still reckon that he's better with a single digital cable, co-axial or digital, to his amp and letting that do the decoding and amplification, which must be better than a spaghetti junction of analogue cables from the DVD player to the amp, as any AV amp he buys nowadays with 5.1 analogue inputs is going to have digital inputs anyway.

Cheers,

Martin.

[inzaman]

Moved as more relevant in DVD players