HDMI to 5.1 analog audio extractor found

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Many folks in the past, and recently, including myself have sought HDMI to RCA products. That was my reason for starting this thread.
I'm glad that some of you, maybe all on QQ, I don't know, have the budget to buy devices costing hundreds of dollars. Many others, myself included, do not, and have to plan ahead to buy especially the bigger ticket items in our audio cabinets.

I AM glad that the capabilities or even lack thereof of these products have been discussed, this helps everyone that may not understand what they are buying, and I appreciate that input and learned a little myself.

It's easy for anyone to say I won't buy this or that. Fine, we all have that choice. But sometimes "good enough" is what you have to do for many of us. For example I once drove a (for me!) expensive muscle car but sold it to drive my old truck. It's "good enough" for my purposes as a retiree and will run on regular gas instead of premium. It was a choice based on my needs.

More and more I see on QQ threads devolving into snide remarks about "clueless people" or such insinuating that I or others are just plain stupid when it comes to audio. Many of us don't have EE degrees or work in a recording studio but manage to do just fine. Let's not go down that road, people. We're all united here in that we love our music and equipment, no matter how low brow that equipment might appear to the "cognoscenti" .

BTW these terms "extractor" and so forth are from the vendors that sell the devices. The nomenclature they choose might be incorrect, misleading or just smoke and mirrors but echoing how they advertise their devices might serve to locate them for the ones interested. Then they can come back and read this thread, take in the comments, weigh the pros and cons, and proceed as they will.
Thanks all for your participation.
 
[...]
More and more I see on QQ threads devolving into snide remarks about "clueless people" or such insinuating that I or others are just plain stupid when it comes to audio. Many of us don't have EE degrees or work in a recording studio but manage to do just fine. Let's not go down that road, people. We're all united here in that we love our music and equipment, no matter how low brow that equipment might appear to the "cognoscenti".
[...]

I'm retired from a global tech company and I'm active in other forums completely unrelated to audio or my former career, but far more technical than here. And I can tell you that the Piled High and deep (PH.d) mentality, i.e. I'm smarter, mine is bigger, I'm correct you're dumb, than yours mentality, is rampant. It's sickening and reeks. It shows a lack of empathy and a strange delusion of self worth. It's no wonder that youth of today avoid the STEM fields. It's not because they're stupid. It's because they're turned off by the personalities all the way up through grad school.

It is indeed a rare individual who is patient and knows how to present a highly technical subject with conciseness and clarity. I immensely cherish that single individual I have had the luck to interact with through my youth. He had a tremendous impact upon my career. Bless his soul (RIP).

I've never met another PH.d with his brilliance and kind and caring demeaner for his students.

I've learned to swallow my pride and ignore egos. No one, NO ONE knows it all.
 
More and more I see on QQ threads devolving into snide remarks about "clueless people" or such insinuating that I or others are just plain stupid when it comes to audio. Many of us don't have EE degrees or work in a recording studio but manage to do just fine. Let's not go down that road, people. We're all united here in that we love our music and equipment, no matter how low brow that equipment might appear to the "cognoscenti" .
Thank you for saying this, and much better than I ever could! I woke up this morning with similar thoughts. Itā€™s a troubling thing and seems so unnecessary. The quasi trolling is keeping some folks here I admire from even posting much. A little civil bedside manner goes a long way. Iā€™m sure I can do much better in this area myself; and will endeavor to do so.
and, for an inexpensive solution to RCA analog to HDMI Iā€™m not aware of any. I thought maybe a ZEKTOR MAS7.1, but probably not there either, with the last one sold on eBay for over $400 (I know ā€˜cause I tried to buy it for a measly $150; someone wanted it much more than I.) &150 is way too much for what seems like should be a simple solution in this day and age. But, HDMI to analog is fairly common IINM.
 
The year 2000 and a budget that does not extend to $20K license fee every year for bugger all sales and 40% of board faults coming from the HDMI experience (our first series of Y4 system). Hell 90% of my home faults come from the HDMI from the FETCH box to the Sony TV. Just a shit system

We are looking at making a HDMI RCA to HDMI converter but budget/ time gets in the way and trying to pay 12 staff.
Hey Chucky, are you still using HDMI in the Y4 system? And if so, does the $20k fee apply to individual products or just company overall?
Seems like if on an individual product basis, then your proposed RCA to HDMI converter would also incur those $20k fees, essentially making a low return product like that financially unfeasable anyway?
 
Many folks in the past, and recently, including myself have sought HDMI to RCA products. That was my reason for starting this thread.
I'm glad that some of you, maybe all on QQ, I don't know, have the budget to buy devices costing hundreds of dollars. Many others, myself included, do not, and have to plan ahead to buy especially the bigger ticket items in our audio cabinets.

I AM glad that the capabilities or even lack thereof of these products have been discussed, this helps everyone that may not understand what they are buying, and I appreciate that input and learned a little myself.

It's easy for anyone to say I won't buy this or that. Fine, we all have that choice. But sometimes "good enough" is what you have to do for many of us. For example I once drove a (for me!) expensive muscle car but sold it to drive my old truck. It's "good enough" for my purposes as a retiree and will run on regular gas instead of premium. It was a choice based on my needs.

More and more I see on QQ threads devolving into snide remarks about "clueless people" or such insinuating that I or others are just plain stupid when it comes to audio. Many of us don't have EE degrees or work in a recording studio but manage to do just fine. Let's not go down that road, people. We're all united here in that we love our music and equipment, no matter how low brow that equipment might appear to the "cognoscenti" .

BTW these terms "extractor" and so forth are from the vendors that sell the devices. The nomenclature they choose might be incorrect, misleading or just smoke and mirrors but echoing how they advertise their devices might serve to locate them for the ones interested. Then they can come back and read this thread, take in the comments, weigh the pros and cons, and proceed as they will.
Thanks all for your participation.

Annoyances of the moving target of HDMI protocol aside, I am tremendously thankful for whoever it is that brings the RCA 8 channel LPCM HDMI audio extractors to market. These are a real godsend to those of us trying to keep our analog quality high as we can, unbalanced as we may be (in more ways than one). If you find a good one, they truly do represent a bright spot in good sounding gear on a budget. Now if only Schiit or someone like this could enter the market, that would be even better. Somehow I just can't justify $7000 for a multichannel HDMI DAC, even if I had the dough.
 
I read about the struggles to adapt some of the stand alone components (eg hardware disc players). Some of this presents some mystery with the signal handling. That leads to questioning if you are really hearing the audio accurately.

I keep mentioning the stock computer -> audio interface -> amps/speakers because it just does all that with no mystery in the interconnections. And it leads to separate components vs the all in one AVR. If one thing misbehaves or goes obsolete, then it's just that one thing to address. That leads to spending far less money to achieve the end goal sound system.

Like I mentioned earlier, the counterpoint is that these digital formats are pretty robust. You can go through a few AD/DA conversions back and forth, downsample it, pass line level analog through a few preamp stages, and you might not be the wiser even on a revealing system. Yes, some lossy conversions are ringers and altering. The point is there's a high level of robustness. That leads to getting away with a lot and not having to compromise for it.

But if you ARE interested in bit accurate delivery of your digital files in their fullest quality with no mysteries, a straight audio interface is the ticket.

This scenario of a stand alone DVD player with analog outs that can't connect to the AVR with only digital input via HDMI. I'd probably take this as the opportunity to start moving to the computer based system. Instead of kludge adapting the DVD player to the AVR, rip the discs in question to the computer and just play them computer -> HDMI -> AVR. Don't buy anything!
 
Somehow I just can't justify $7000 for a multichannel HDMI DAC, even if I had the dough.
Especially when products like that Midas designed interface are available with 8 channels of ADC and 10 channels of DAC for under $300! Even Apogee, Prism, or RME AD and DA converters don't cost as much as they used to anymore. (The brand names to look for if you really need to unload some cash.)
 
Last edited:
I read about the struggles to adapt some of the stand alone components (eg hardware disc players). Some of this presents some mystery with the signal handling. That leads to questioning if you are really hearing the audio accurately.

I keep mentioning the stock computer -> audio interface -> amps/speakers because it just does all that with no mystery in the interconnections. And it leads to separate components vs the all in one AVR. If one thing misbehaves or goes obsolete, then it's just that one thing to address. That leads to spending far less money to achieve the end goal sound system.

Like I mentioned earlier, the counterpoint is that these digital formats are pretty robust. You can go through a few AD/DA conversions back and forth, downsample it, pass line level analog through a few preamp stages, and you might not be the wiser even on a revealing system. Yes, some lossy conversions are ringers and altering. The point is there's a high level of robustness. That leads to getting away with a lot and not having to compromise for it.

But if you ARE interested in bit accurate delivery of your digital files in their fullest quality with no mysteries, a straight audio interface is the ticket.

This scenario of a stand alone DVD player with analog outs that can't connect to the AVR with only digital input via HDMI. I'd probably take this as the opportunity to start moving to the computer based system. Instead of kludge adapting the DVD player to the AVR, rip the discs in question to the computer and just play them computer -> HDMI -> AVR. Don't buy anything!
I hear you Jim, pro audio wins every time, but this is an area they choose not to compete. Like I said straight out the gate, I have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 from my Mac mini that I plug straight in to my preamp with TS-RCA cables. Yes, I and most of us rip our DVD-As and Blu Ray-As and stream them direct. Some, seemingly with software engineering degrees, even rip SACDs! AppleTV is the real sticking point here. You just can't talk the whole world out of all that content because HDMI is frustrating, especially on a thread about dealing with HDMI.
 
Hey Chucky, are you still using HDMI in the Y4 system? And if so, does the $20k fee apply to individual products or just company overall?
Seems like if on an individual product basis, then your proposed RCA to HDMI converter would also incur those $20k fees, essentially making a low return product like that financially unfeasable anyway?
Hi Pup

We sell the Y4 with a hdmi to stereo rca converter. The fee is a lump annual fee on your company but you also pay per product for the licensed chipset.
 
As I said earlier until recently I was using an older AVR with only 5.1 analog inputs in my pc setup, not connected to my main audio system with anything but a Creative DTS-610 via a 50ft toslink cable. (long story there but I no longer use it)
With this system I had 3 playback devices; 2 pc's and an early Oppo "universal" player that all had to be connected in such a way as to be switched individually into the AVR's analog inputs. I used an analog switch to change between the three playback devices.
In the case of the Oppo, it was there because I sometimes author DVDA discs and had the need to preview the graphics/menu without accessing the main system and interrupting the rest of the household (read:wife).
With all the cables, speaker wire, UPS, etc the underside of my old oak dining table/desk looked like a mass of skinny snakes and a few boxes. My thought was moving to an HDMI > Analog device(s) could cut the clutter down. and I would use the HDMI output from the devices instead of analog. Though at the end of the chain only analog could be fed to the AVR which is old but I'm quite fond of,.

It's all moot now as I decided to move the main audio into this separate room to celebrate my wife's impending retirement. Probably more than a few of you understand my reasoning. lol.

As the TV in the main living room will no longer be connected to the HT system, I'm just going to settle for lossy via toslink to the venerable old Sherwood from the TV for the time being and use a set of bookshelf speakers in lieu of the ones that replaced them at the pc sound system. Not a big TV watcher myself, and my wife will not care about the difference in sound quality.
 
I've always thought these HDMI to analog audio was pretty common. I remember seing multiple similar ones on Parts Express & Ebay. Now, finding a 5.1 analog in to HDMI out I've never seen. It would do a world of good for legacy gear or Surround Master to feed into newer equipment.

Here is something I never saw before. From Crestron who make good stuff for the professional installation guys.

It's a RGB video and stereo audio input to HDMI output box on fleeb for $99

https://www.ebay.com/itm/334237628779?hash=item4dd21d796b:g:gjsAAOSwmFBhpkEj
 
The year 2000 and a budget that does not extend to $20K license fee every year for bugger all sales and 40% of board faults coming from the HDMI experience (our first series of Y4 system). Hell 90% of my home faults come from the HDMI from the FETCH box to the Sony TV. Just a shit system

We are looking at making a HDMI RCA to HDMI converter but budget/ time gets in the way and trying to pay 12 staff.
The day you begin selling this converter is the day I buy a Surround Master!
 
I bought the Monoprice Blackbird HDMI to 7.1 extractor and it works beautifully. Roughly $60 on the Amazon, or shop at Monoprice, or build one?
I use it to feed a second AVR for a 7.1.4 Atmos system. @zeerround turned me on to it. No complaints so far. It has 4 3.5mm outs and I use conversion cables to feed the AVR.

Those that have complaints with HDMI are righteous to do so. The chip they used to put in Denon, Marantz, etc apparently caused many a problem. Supposedly fixed with a new chip in the 2022 models.
Onkyo went through that phase as well. I had to recap a board on one to get it to settle down. Main prob is usually a chip from what I read.

Licensing fees. Ugh. The small business killer.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top