Need DAC for vintage system that supports AC3 for 4k.

bicroti

New Member
Hello! Just like the title says I'm looking for a DAC for my system. I have a Sansui G-8000 hooked up to a pair of DCM TF1000's. I have a few 4k movies but of course I need a DAC to play them with my good speakers and not the TV. I dont need a super nice one since I won't personally tell the difference since my TV speakers are so terrible of course. All suggestions would be great. Like I said I dont need anything high end.
 
It's probably going to be more about what physical output you have on your 4K source. Normally higher resolution (1080P and up) video sources want to keep everything on the HDMI output because it has signal security (HDCP) built in. You may have a TOSlink optical out for audio and there's a bunch of DACs that support that connection - but remember to tell the video player to output a stereo (not multi-channel) audio signal.
 
I have a Samsung UBD M-7500 for my 4k player. And it has an optical input on it. I guess the problem is having a dac that supports AC3 and DTS and the like. I bought one from bestbuy and didn't even think about it and so of course I just got static after the main menu.
 
In simple terms you can't send multichannel data (AC3 (Dolby) or DTS) to a stereo DAC . . it simply doesn't understand the data as it expects to only see info for the left and right channels. Hence you need to tell the source device to only send out stereo (normally encoded as PCM or LPCM).

There are some multichannel DACs out there but the rest of your system is stereo so the DAC you bought may be fine if you send it data it can actually understand.
 

Yes it looks like it should - it's probably not the most 'audiophile' DAC but it should work IF the disc player is outputting a stereo digital signal on its optical (TOSlink) port. It should convert those 1s and 0s into analog audio that you can feed into one of the line level inputs on your receiver. The noise you were hearing before was mostly likely because it couldn't interpret the multichannel data that was coming into it.
 
Yeah I know it's definitely not super high quality but itll be good enough for right now. Thanks so much for the help. I really appreciate it.
 
There are also a bunch of these that can handle multichannel over optical and mix it down to stereo out.

Not "super high end needs cables made in moonlight by elves," but they let you feed multichannel to a stereo even if you've no way to force PCM on a tv but hate its built in speakers.

https://www.amazon.com/LiNKFOR-Decoder-Digital-Converter-Control/dp/B07BW9D37T

this one happens also to have a headphone amp.

No idea how it sounds, but i picked one up from different vendor a few years ago and now and when I use it it's operational still. haven't had it in use much in several years but before i upgraded the TV it was helpful.
 
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