I am using right now an optical digital cable to connect my universal player to my receiver for playing dvd's and using the 5.1 analog cable connections to play 5.1 dvd-a or sacd music. And as of now when playing a regular cd I just turn my receiver to the dvd play mode and play the cd. Is their a better way of connecting the universal player to the receiver for playing regular cd's or is the way I am doing it fine? Should I connect the coaxial digital audio out on the universal player to the cd coxial digital audio input on the receiver? Or connect the L/R stereo channels from the universal player that is not being used for the 5.1 audio to the L/R stereo channels input for CD mode in the receiver? Or will it make no difference at all except that the receiver will show "CD" on its display and I should just play the regular cd's with the connections I have been using?
Your doing it right. Dig for cd's. Remember,you bypass everything in the reciever using the analogs. Sometimes i listen to cd's using the analogs,out of all the speakers.
DS, your player must work differently than mine. If playing a 2 channel CD track through the analog connections, it will play through just the front left and right speakers. I prefer this to using the receiver's processing since although the DSP or stereo mode sounds OK, it is definitely inferior to the direct connection from the DVD player. I even use the 6 channel direct mode for playing DTS and DD tracks off concert DVDs, as well as in some movies such as old westerns.
I will use the optical cable if I feel the need to adjust the tone of whats playing (ie increase sub output.)