Can a new DAC help me?


Right now I'm getting TrueHD sound via a sony bluray player and hooking it up via of the multichannel analog to my old yamaha dsp-a1 because it doesn't have hdmi. I'm looking into getting a Bel canto 1.5 DAC. Can this new DAC work for my system for lossless sound? i only see optical, coxial and usb connections, can lossless travel to my yamaha thru these cables or do i need hdmi...confused.
monterey
Outboard dacs only pass 2 channel sound, not multichannel. Your current set up passes TrueHD lossless as is, using the DAC in the Sony and passing a multichannel lossless signal to your Yamaha.

That's as good as it gets. HDMI is just a convenience (fewer cables).
An HDMI cable is required to handle digital TrueHD lossless signal. The other option is to have the blu-ray player output the signal in individual analog channels (i.e. 8 individual cables for 7.1).