Well, as mentioned in other two threads, I haven't been able to get
AC3 audio out of my new
Mercury-II. I had hopes that the problem was due to some issue with the optical input of my Soundblaster Extigy, which I've been using as an AC3 decoder for years via the
coaxial input.
UPS FINALLY delivered the optical --> coaxial converter that I ordered, and I just connected it. Unfortunately, STILL NO AC3 AUDIO.
The converter works fine on regular digital, but not on AC3. I really had hopes that this would work, but nope.
I hooked up the coaxial cable to my oscilloscope, and first displayed the signal from Montanna
PBS, which has regular mpeg audio, and you can see a square wave with ringing, which is stable when there is no audio, but jumps around a lot when there is audio. When I switched to one of the PBS AC3 channels, I still got the square wave, but it doesn't jump around when there should be audio. Also, the Extigy is not detecting any Dolby Digital (it has a light that lights up when it sees Dolby Digital). I've reset the thing to factory defaults several times, and also upgraded to the newest firmware.
I really have to conclude at this point that my new Mercury is just not working right. The Mercury is detecting the channels as AC3, but just not outputting the AC3 signal. I guess I'll have to contact
Sadoun to find out what my options are.