2016-09-18, 20:33
(2016-09-18, 20:05)hollywoodpete Wrote: I hope this is the right place to ask but I am planning to switch to an Odroid C2 from a RPi with HiFiBerry and optical output going into a high-end surround sound processor feeding high-end amps. My processor does not support HDMI inputs. I am not stuck on using the processor and would be happy to switch to a smaller unit with multi-channel RCA outputs to feed the amps but don't want do sacrifice on the sound quality or deal with significant lip-synch issues. Are there USB options available that might work? I have an Odroid C2 on another TV and am so pleased with it's snappyness, I find it annoying to use the RPi
If you do not rely on your processor, why don't you buy a device that supports HDMI? Why sticking to multi channel RCA? I am missing something here I think. Could you explain your aim a bit better, please?
HDMI would provide better sound quality as it supports HD-Audio (DTS-HD, TrueHD, Atmos, DTS-X) and also transfers the sound digitally, so no conversion from digital to analog (RPi / O-C2), then input into any sound processor, which converts it from analog to digital again for processing... every step has naturally a quality loss and then also interferences and so on can happen on analog audio transfers (RCA connection and wires). Multi channel RCA sounds like you want to output the audio as analog signal via the RCA cables (each 2 channel), i.e. for FR/FL, C/LFE and RR/RL... I doubt this could ever be better than direct digital HDMI output followed by digital signal processing without any A/D conversions.
