tintedpane.com

First a little follow-up on the UMC-1. There’s a popping sound when changing volume. At least it passes 24P content.

Thoughts on 24P:

It still looks somewhat soap operaish to me at this point.

DVDO Edge and Gefen Dolby Digital D/A Converter:

Wow, the switching is fast on the Edge. And there are no sync issues when changing the inputs. 1:1 frame rate lock is nice. The zoom is very nice if you want to fill-up your 16:9 display with anamorphic (2.40/2.35:1) content. Input renaming is convenient. Input priority auto switching is awesome. I can have Wii > PS3 > TV and it’ll auto switch based on what’s turned on and switch back when that unit is off. And if there are no inputs on, it’ll turn itself off. Very nice. Couple that with auto-on based on inputs, and you basically don’t need to mess with the device after it’s setup. Which is exactly what I want! Now to the negatives, which are few, but are pretty egregious. When using the toslink output (which is the only other option other than HDMI — again, I really wish they had analog audio out!!!!) and the Gefen D/A there is severe popping when switching inputs. It even happened when changing channels on the DirecTV tuner. I was able to rectify that by turning off Dolby digital surround audio on the DirecTV and it stopped — which makes me question whether I should get the non-Dolby digital Gefen D/A since this one can’t handle source changes without popping. Another about the Edge is if you have audio outputted on the toslink output, it won’t put it out on the HDMI either. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but I have an HDMI splitter going to another TV that doesn’t use a separate audio system. Not helpful. It’d be nice if it could put out audio on both.

Next up, I will try the D/A directly from the toslink output of the TV since it seems to have no problem muting its built-in speakers when changing inputs. If that works, then it’s harder for me to justify having the Edge, whose primary purpose was to convert the Wii component imput to HDMI so I wouldn’t have all these cables clutter up the TV. Which I guess was hard to justify in the first place since I also got a Gefen Component -> HDMI unit to try out. (I wanted to compare the output qualities). If only there was an input priority HDMI switch like the one Oppo stopped selling. Boo.

Followup:

Using optical out from TV to Gefen D/A = perfect results! No popping or squelching. Switching channels - no problem. Switching inputs on Edge - no problem. Next, using the Emotiva UMC-1 strictly as a D/A. Two ways, one using HDMI audio and the other using optical Toslink. As Toslink, switching inputs on Edge results in slight squelching. Barely acceptable. As HDMI audio only, switching inputs results in high frequency buzzing. Moderate bass popping on occasion. Changing channels, HDMI no problems. Toslink no problems as well. Overall, much better than using Edge -> Gefen D/A, but still only barely acceptable. Why don’t these companies work more on polish and finish. These little details matter!

Post postscript:

Using optical out to Gefen D/A, there is a bad turn-off bass pop. Sigh, still not appliance like (in having no glaring problems and working day in day out). I’ll have to stick to turning off the audio portion before turning the tv off.

3rd postscript:

New Gefen D/A (non DD 5.1):
This one works even better than the DD D/A that Gefen makes. No turn-off pop when connected to TV. Will try it out on the DVDO edge to see if it makes noise when changing inputs. Result: No noise. The regular non-surround D/A works like….an appliance!!!

My current setup keeps audio (analog mostly) and video separate. As you can see from my previous rant about digital only audio outputs on TV’s I’m still ticked off that I have to spend additional monies just to keep the same setup. Previously, I had the audio from the TV feeding into the pre-amp which fed the downstream audio equipment. Video signal was handled by a cheap HDMI switcher into an HDMI splitter. Component video (Wii output) was unattractively connected directly to the TV. Now that most TV’s are digital audio out only, I decided to try a different route that would also incorporate video (including component) into my main setup. So…I purchased…

The Emotiva UMC-1. So far, I’m not too happy with this unit. A lot of raves on the internet about how this is a $2000 unit at a bargain $699 value. With some possible downsides. I buy the downsides part, but the value I’m still suspect on it. I expect a product like this to work like an appliance — it should work out of the box, no problems first time and everytime. It’s not a cheap HDMI splitter that I can tolerate, occasionally needing a power-cycle. The audio and video sync should happen flawlessly without stutter. I was watching L&O SVU last night and everytime it came back from commercials, it would have to resync when going from 2 channel to surround sound. Unacceptable. Eventually, it would stop syncing altogether and I couldn’t even watch that channel. Seriously. It would stutter the video along with the audio. Even after restarting the unit. Moving on it also looks like the component upscaler is pretty low quality as well. Definitely a lot of detail is being lost in the conversion. Start-up time is slow and the whole unit just seems sluggish. Changing inputs is slow as well. That was just 2 hours with it. I hope it gets better, but in the meanwhile, I’ve poured more money into a contingency plan.

This plan, is more linux-y in that it stays modular like my previous setup. I’m getting a DVDO Edge to handle the video (along with component upconversion), A Geffen D/A that will allow me to continue using my old analog only pre-amp, and another backup Geffen component to HDMI converter in case the DVDO Edge is another un-polished product — from reading it’s FAQ, I might have instances where it won’t output audio on the digital out (HMDI only) due to HDCP compliance (btw, I hate HDCP, just another crap DRM) not allowing non-HDMI digital audio out.

So, just because I upgrade the TV, I have to jump through many hoops just to get a simple analog audio output…well, actually, I add a little to the problem because I wanted to get rid of the ugly component cables from the Wii (damn you Super Mario; I wouldn’t need it if you weren’t a fun game). Still, it’s quite annoying. If I do the simplest setup which moves the D/A to behind the TV, I’ll have to look for right angle adapters for the Toslink connection, which is more money and more time down the drain. Even writing the entry is a pain b/c it wouldn’t have been necessary! It’s an analog world and it’ll always be an analog world damnit.