I recently bought a Yamaha HTR-5840 Receiver and surround sound speakers. I am trying to connect digital HD cable and DVD player to them. The receiver has one set of multichannel inputs, and several inputs for each device. Which one should I use and why? Why is there only one multichannel input and several for the others. Not sure I understand the difference.
In general, the multichannel analog input is used for SACD or other multichannel audio format, which cannot be connected via digital (optical or coax S/PDIF). I suppose Yamaha assumes you will only have one source playing this format. On my RXV-657, there is a separate button for selecting multichannel input that overrides any other source selection. I have both the 5.1 digital and the multichannel analog connected between my Yamaha and my SACD-capable DVD player (Samsung HD950). I use the 5.1 digital connection for movies, and the multichannel only when listening to SACDs.
So, I would recommend using the digital 5.1 connections for your cable and DVD player, because: 1. you need 2, and there is only 1 multichannel input on your receiver
2. If you use the multichannel for cable or DVD, you are then using the surround decoder in the source device instead of that in the Yamaha. Unless these are really high-end sources (and that probably eliminates any cable box by definition), the Yamaha's DSP system is probably superior.
3. You can mix and match which audio and video connections are used for a given receiver source selection. This may not be important if you only have 2 sources, but I ended up 'maxing out' all my inputs, and had to get creative with this mix and match capability to get everything (DVD, SAT, DVD Recorder, CD recorder, cassette recorder, game systems, S-VHS VCR) connected.