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mtbmtb

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 22, 2011
13
0
Hello, I have an ATV hooked up to my TV via HDMI for video/sound. I also have an old stereo receiver I would like to hook up to some new outdoor speakers and AirPlay from my iPhone/iPad. The receiver is for audio to these speakers only, not to be used with the TV. I want to hook up the ATV to the receiver via the Optical output connected to a DAC (ordered it Monday) and then input to my old receiver via RCA. Will I be able to get audio out of both the HDMI and Optical when both are plugged in? Can I have my TV off, or on a different Input (watching via the cable box), and have the ATV and receiver on listening to music outside? And then when the receiver is off and I want to watch a movie via ATV, will I get the audio through the HDMI? If that doesn’t work I guess I’d have to plug in or unplug the HDMI or optical cord depending on what I wanted to do. I guess that wouldn’t be a big deal, just trying to make it as easy as possible. Thanks for the help!
 
Optical Out & HDMI

Are you plugging the HDMI output into your TV? If so this will work fine. However if you bought a new amp that has HDMI inputs you will not need an optical cable or a converter. I recently bought a new 7.1 Dolby Digital Amp (Pioneer VSX-921) for £399 which has 4 HDMI inputs, 1 HDMI output several optical inputs, digital coaxial inputs, component video inputs & output and old phono ins and outs too.
 
Yes, the HDMI out is connected to the TV. I want to use my old receiver that was sitting around, not invest in new equipment (expect for the converter) since I would only be using it for audio with my outdoor speakers. I do not have a need for a home theater setup on this particular TV.
 
Using Old Equipment

The it would be perfectly okay although if you try and output your TV signal and the sound to your outdoor speakers simultaneously the sound from each (the TV and separate speakers) will NOT be synced, if this isn't required however you can do this no problem with your existing equipment using the original method that you described.
 
The it would be perfectly okay although if you try and output your TV signal and the sound to your outdoor speakers simultaneously the sound from each (the TV and separate speakers) will NOT be synced, if this isn't required however you can do this no problem with your existing equipment using the original method that you described.

It's not necessarily true that the audio will be out of sync. I run my ATV3 HDMI through my AVR, which then passes video to my TV. I use a DAC to route the optical audio to my AVR for Zone 2 (requires analog audio). The result when playing music back is that it is all in sync.

If the TV (or AVR) does some delay on the audio (perhaps to sync up with a TV that is doing lots of video processing), this could be an issue. However, it's not a guarantee to be an issue.
 
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