Digital Input Trick

Many of us have smaller audio systems around our home. Some even in a garage or shop area. These system sometimes have the "hand-me-down equipment from the big brother main system in your home. If this is the case in your home you may have an older AVR(audio video receiver) in the secondary system(s) that doesn't have enough digital inputs for your needs. Remember those early receivers that may have had a SINGLE co-ax digital input and a SINGLE optical digital input? The good news is they usually had plenty of composite video inputs(the yellow inputs that use a RCA jack). Why is that good news? If you have 2 or 3 devices that you want to connect via co-ax digital cable to a receiver with only a single co-ax input there is a nifty trick you can do that works with many receivers. First, connect the composite video OUTPUT of the receiver to the co-ax digital input on the same receiver. Now you can connect multiple source devices via digital co-ax by using the composite video inputs on the receiver. The receiver itself becomes a co-ax digital switcher using its composite video switching board. I cannot guarantee this will work with every receiver but I have tried it with several over the years and I'm 3 for 3 so far.

PS: Feel free to use those old (yellow) composite video cables for the digital connections or even a subwoofer cable. They usually have plenty of shielding and are 75 ohm.

Tom V.
Power Sound Audio