[cpalcott]

Hello all. First time poster. I am interested in purchasing an Eastern Electric DAC to run my Apple TV music server through, but I also need to run a tivo through it to satisfy the wife and child, as this room is unable to be a dedicated 2-channel listening room. Problem is, EE DAC is not a remote controlled switching pre-amp. I have an older Harman Kardon AVR 254 lying around and was wondering if I could successfully use it as a digital switcher in front of the DAC? I would run the Tivo and ATV via optical to the AVR and then utilize the Coax digital output of the AVR to the coax input of the EE DAC. My question is, would this degrade the quality of the signal coming from the ATV (added jitter) or would the Sabre DAC remedy any added jitter. I am currently running a pretty high quality optical cable (Wireworld Supernova 6) from my ATV to my existing pre-amp. Would the quality of this cable be lost in the translation to coax in the AVR? If I used a high quality coax cable from the avr to the EE DAC would this help?

[srb]

The AVR should work theoretically as a switcher.  It may add some jitter, but you would have to let your own ears determine if it's audible.  The Sabre DAC does not make all levels of jitter inconsequential, as evidenced by it's unwillingness to work well with the high-jitter Airport Express wireless N.
 
The EE DAC (and most external audio DACs) will not process Dolby Digital or DTS multi-channel signals, so the TIVO source would have to be configured to output 2-channel PCM.

If you didn't want to use your large AVR with idling power amps merely for switching purposes, you could use a remote controlled switcher similar to the Inday DA4X-R Remote Controlled S/PDIF Digital Audio Switcher.
http://www.inday.com/da4x/da4x.htm
 
Steve
 

[fsimms]

I am not familiar with your products, but I use my Panasonic AVR as a switcher to a TACT digital audio preamp. It works well, but my TACT can’t demultiplex Blu-Ray and DVD matrixed audio.  Luckily, my DVD and Blu-Ray players can demultiplex the audio into PCM or bitstream before it sends it out the Toslink.

Bob