Thursday 20th October
I have been spending most of this week bringing in and re-sorting my LP and CD collections.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently purchased a Linn Kisto pre-amp to replace my Linn AV5103 pre-amp.
This is the last multi channel processor that Linn produced, and unlike many other multi-channel processors, the Linn ones are more than capable of playing pitch accurate music as well as being the centre of an all singing, all dancing surround system.
The Linn Kisto pre-dates HDMI connections and so I have been attempting to use the toslink audio output from the TV for multichannel audio.
I was somewhat dismayed that I was only managing 2 channel sound from the TV and the satellite receiver, despite using a digital output, but after much reading online, it would seem that modern HDMI based equipment will only put out 2 channels over an spdif connection, the main claims are that there is insufficient bandwidth to carry any more.
This is of course utter rubbish, since the original design catered for 5 or more uncompressed channels with ease.
However implementing audio copy protection on an spdif cable is fairly rudimentary and easily circumvented, and not what the film studios wanted, so more effort was placed on moving the audio to the HDMI cable where it could be subject to HDCP copy protection and much more in-line with the desires of the film studios.
As such I needed to look at some means of extracting the audio from the HDMI cable without buying yet another receiver.
The answer appears to be what is known as an ‘Audio De-Embedder’, which to me sounds like a fairly ridiculous name for an audio extractor.
The Kisto has a vast array of input possibilities and is highly configurable with regards defining what inputs are used for what.
It also has the ability to take a pre-split 5.1 or 7.1 channel input as separate phono feeds.
For now I have purchased a no name 5.1 channel item from ebay. At some point in the future, I will upgrade my HDMI switch and the audio de-embedder to be HDMI 2.0 compliant, but for now HDMI 1.3 is good enough.
This item has HDMI in and out and can take a PCM stream and output this through 6 separate phono connections.
These can then be connected directly to a group of 5.1 inputs on my Kisto pre-amp.
I have also purchased an Aten VS0801H 8 port HDMI switch, so that I can switch all of my HDMI sources whilst keeping the pre-amp on the same setting.
Rear view:
The various HDMI sources plug into the switch, the output goes to the de-embedder, and then on to the TV, the audio is pulled out and passed to the pre-amp as a 5.1 pre-split connections.
For non HDMI signals, these can be processed by the pre-amp either as composite video or as component video.
I can then take the component video output from the Kisto, pass it through my TvOne C2-5100 Scaler:
Rear connectivity:
where it will be upscaled to 1080p and then to an HD-Anywhere component video to HDMI converter
before connecting to one of the inputs on the HDMI switch.
I don’t bother with adding the audio into the HDMI stream produced from the component video as this is switched and processed at the Kisto.