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Q I have a new Sony UBP-X1100ES Ultra HD Blu-ray player and Denon receiver. I know I can use a coaxial digital connection between the player and receiver for playback of regular CDs. Can I use the same connection to pass high-res audio formats like SACD and DVD-Audio to the receiver, or do I need an HDMI cable for that? —John Huxhold, Manchester, MO

A You will need to use either an HDMI or an analog stereo connection between the Ultra HD Blu-ray player and your receiver. The Sony’s coaxial digital connection only supports output of standard Dolby Digital and DTS bitstreams, along with the two-channel PCM digital audio found on CDs, while its HDMI output will pass the multichannel high-resolution digital audio contained on SACD and DVD-Audio discs.

Depending on the capabilities of your external gear, you can configure the player to pass the SACD data in bitstream format (for decoding by the receiver). The other option is to configure the player to first convert the DSD on SACDs to a multichannel PCM format, which is also used by DVD-Audio discs.

If HDMI isn’t an option for you, you can still listen to high-res audio on SACD and DVD-Audio discs using the Sony’s RCA analog stereo connection. In this case, however, any multichannel mixes on disc will be downconverted to a two-channel format for output.