Can someone explain to me what a receiver does?

[jjahshik32]

I'm thinking about buying a receiver to use optical out with my new sony bravia xbr4 46". On the t.v. it has optical as well and the xbox 360 has optical that i'm trying to use and I only currently have an integrated amp rotel rb-985bx with no optical. So does this mean that if I buy a receiver I can hook up the integrated rotel amp to the receiver, then hook the receiver up to the xbox 360??

Also I've been using just the red and white analog sound plugs for sound via headphone jack and it sounds great but just curious how much better the fiber optics will make...

[Aussie Geoff]

Hi,

I am moving this to the Home Theatre Forum so you can get some friendly answers...

Geoff

[Briz vegas]

HT receivers have a number of components

1. DAC - digital to analogue converter - just like the one on your computer sound card or CD player or DVD player (generally most closely related to the ones in the DVD player). The input into this component is a digital signal via either a coaxial cable or an optical cable (in the form of light) -coaxial is generally considered to be marginally superior in quality. If you are using the receivers DAC you will bypass the one on your computer/DVD by running a cable from your source components digital output (coaxial or optical) into the receiver digital input.
2. Surround processor - it does the Dolby/DTS proprietary fine tuning - I'm not sure exactly how integral this is with the DAC itself but they are pretty much siamese twins.
3. Preamp (gives you volume control and a small amount of volume gain)
4. Power amp (gives you the big gain to drive your speakers) - typically 7 of them these days - one for each speaker.

........oh and lets not forget the radio part as well of course.

If you plug into the receiver using the optical inputs the sound quality will very much depend on the quality of the recievers DAC vs the quality of the DAC on the source (computer/DVD/CD) that you are bypassing (you only need to do the digital to analgue conversion once).

Digital connection does not automatically mean the best sound quality. If you have a top quality CD player and analogue interconnect cable it will outperform the DAC on most receivers.

Clear as mud ?