Up until now, I've been using just L/R audio. I finally bought myself surround sound speakers and realized that I need to get the audio from the dvd player to the receiver.
I could go with 6 RCA cables (one for each channel, obviously), or use the orange digital coax.
This orange cable looks a lot like the RCA cables. If I have a quality cable for the analog, can I just use that instead?
The one diagram I came across shows the orange cable being used in conjuction with the Red/White cables. Are they really necessary?
I am a novice at this but from what I know, you do not need the RCA cables unless you want your DVD to do the Digital to Analog conversion.
When you hook up the digital cable, the receiver is doing the D/A conversion, bypassing the DVD's D/A. Unless your DVD is very expensive, chance is your receiver D/A is better. I'm using the optical out from my DVD, bypassing the DVD D/A.