Key Digital announced this week a new solution for the problem of managing audio via its KD-HD8X8BT Digital IQ HDMI Matrix switcher.

With the proliferation of a wide variety of audio formats and the increased demand to be able to utilize all of these various formats, it is becoming increasingly difficult to both manage all of these formats and preserve the best audio quality for the consumer. Key Digital’s new KD-HD8X8BT 8×8 HDMI matrix switch can help integrators with these issues.

For example, let’s assume you use KD-HD8X8BT in three zones with different characteristics:

1. Zone with a flat screen TV with built-in stereo speakers. For this zone you will need HDMI with a stereo audio signal.
2. Home theater zone with the latest 7.1 channel AV receiver, speakers, and flat screen TV
3. Home theater zone with an older non-HDMI 5.1 AV receiver capable of Dolby Digital with flat screen TV

KD-HD8X8BT can help with these zoning requirements through the EDID control feature.

For Zone 1, the installer would make sure that L/R stereo audio is available from every source. On output 1 you would program that output to insert PCM stereo into the HDMI signal instead of any other audio format. The PCM stereo is created and outputted in place of L/R stereo inside the switcher.

For Zone 2, you would pass the HDMI signal (containing authentic audio) with its highest quality available audio format. For sources sending DTS-HD, DTS-HD would be the preferred audio format for this zone. The flat screen TV can be connected to the HDMI output for the AV receiver associated with this zone.

For Zone 3, the HDMI output is programmed to insert Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The PCM coaxial output will provide Dolby Digital to the AV receiver. This zone will only have audio available from the AV receiver and speakers, the flat screen TV will ignore the Dolby Digital audio and display only video.