Diva features

AVR

Audio/video receiver

An AVR is often the oldest thing in a modern chain and the first thing to limit it. The Diva is arranged so a receiver can keep decoding sound without standing in the path of the picture.

AVR stands for audio/video receiver, the amplifier at the centre of a home cinema. It decodes surround formats, drives the speakers, and traditionally switches every source too, with the display hanging off its single HDMI output.

That arrangement ages badly. Audio formats change slowly and amplification hardly changes at all, so a receiver stays perfectly good for a decade, while its HDMI stage is fixed at whatever bandwidth and copy protection existed when it was built. An AVR from before HDCP 2.2 or before 18Gbps becomes the limit of the whole system if the video has to pass through it.

The remedy is to stop sending video through it. Route the picture directly to the display, deliver the sound to the receiver on a connection of its own, and the amplifier goes back to the job it is still good at.

Feeding an AVR from the HDfury Diva

The dedicated HDMI audio output exists for this. It is a self-generated 720p or 1080p video stream carrying full audio, made to feed any AVR input, and the sound can come from any source at the Diva inputs or from eARC or ARC on TX0. The receiver locks onto something modest regardless of what is going to the display on TX0.

There are two other routes. A receiver that is only capable of 1080p, in HDR or SDR, can be connected to TX1 and gets full HDMI sound and video. One with nothing but an optical input takes the 3.5mm combo jack, which carries S/PDIF up to 5.1 with the supplied jack optical cable, or analogue stereo.

Because no audio conversion takes place, the practical limit is the receiver rather than the Diva. Set the EDID your sources read to match what the AVR can actually decode and they will only send formats the chain can handle. In AUTOMIX the AUDIO OUT flag forces the mixed EDID to present the maximum audio capabilities of the sink at the audio output, which is exactly the case when the amplifier is fed from there.

The settings an AVR changes

CEC device type

Video Processor is the default and the one to choose when you have an AVR in the setup and want that AVR to be the device using ARC or CEC. Audio Processor is for when you want the Diva ARC feature on instead.

MUTE TX0 AUDIO

In the CONFIG section, stops the display on TX0 producing sound as well as the amplifier. The command is set mutetx0audio on.

Enable DD+/ATMOS ARC

Extends what is pulled back from the television. Very few AVRs accept 192kHz over optical, so in most setups DD+ and Atmos should go to an HDMI input on the receiver instead.

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