Does an external DAC make sense if my receiver doesn’t have analog bypass?

[Donovan]

I’m a bit skeptical if I will hear a difference in a DAC, but willing to try one out. My Anthem MRX 720 doesn’t have an analog bypass option. So, I’m wondering if a new DAC signal from the RCA connection is just going to get reprocessed by the Anthem internal DAC. Thus, making it a useless venture. Thanks

 

[staticV3]

If the incoming signal is digitized regardless, and the receiver's DSP can be fed directly via SPDIF, then that is how you will achieve the best signal fidelity.

In that case, any money spent on an external DAC, no matter how expensive or performant it may be, would be wasted.

Edit:
According to the User Manual, digitization can be bypassed:


Therefore:

	Source format: Digital	Source format: Analog
DSP desired	use direct digital input	turn on Process analog input. Use analog input, or an external ADC (e.g. PocketADC) if you find the Anthem's internal ADC adds noise
DSP unwanted	use direct digital input, or an external DAC with 'Process: No' if you find that the internal DAC adds noise.	Use analog input with Process analog input turned off.

 

[DVDdoug]

I’m a bit skeptical if I will hear a difference in a DAC

Good! Most DACs are better than human hearing.

The AVR has some advantages... It has multiple-selectable digital input and it can decode multi-channel DVD & Blu-Ray formats not supported by most stand-alone DACs.

 

[Donovan]

If the incoming signal is digitized regardless, and the receiver's DSP can be fed directly via SPDIF, then that is how you will achieve the best signal fidelity.

In that case, any money spent on an external DAC, no matter how expensive or performant it may be, would be wasted.

Edit:
According to the User Manual, digitization can be bypassed:
View attachment 516219

Therefore:

	Source format: Digital	Source format: Analog
DSP desired	use direct digital input	turn on Process analog input. Use analog input, or an external ADC (e.g. PocketADC) if you find the Anthem's internal ADC adds noise
DSP unwanted	use direct digital input, or an external DAC with 'Process: No' if you find that the internal DAC adds noise.	Use analog input with Process analog input turned off.

Nice find, thanks! I’m assuming accessing any of the sound modes (AnthemLogic, DTS Neural, etc…) would then not be used (to keep the AVR’s DAC out of the equation). So, you are going to only listen to 2-channel, which I’m sure external DAC proponents would exclusively use anyways.