Adding a 5.1 Receiver + Centre Speaker to Stereo HiFi Setup

[mothermachine]

Hi folks.

After a little advice, please!

Right now I have a very simple Stereo HiFi w/CD-player with 2 x Dali Zensor bookshelf speakers, being fed audio via Optical Cable from my TV. Very happy with this setup - great for music and OK for TV/films, although vocals/speech suck, since they're lost in the stereo mix.

I would like to add a centre speaker to get vocals/speech to be treated properly for movies/TV. I'm think the only way of doing this is to upgrade to a proper multi-channel AV receiver, so I can add the third speaker (a Dali Zensor Pico Vokal is what I'm looking at, to match the other 2 speakers I already have). I have no need or space for a subwoofer or any rear speakers, so really a simple 3.0 setup is ideal for what I want. There's no space for a soundbar unfortunately (telly is very very snug inside an alcove shelf space).

My trouble is that I don't want to get rid of my current Yamaha HiFi - my missus loves it and understands how to use it, and it has a built-in CD player, so I want to keep that effectively as a dumb CD player running into the new AV receiver.

My question: If I add a 5.1 AV receiver to my setup and run all 3 x speakers off that, what's the simplest and safest way to get stereo output from the stereo hifi into the new 5.1 AV receiver (I'm looking at a Pioneer VSX-832/932 or similar right now), and still get proper stereo sound from the new receiver for music listening? Will it simply ignore the 3rd centre speaker? Or will it use it as well, somehow? That new 5.1 receiver has simple Phono inputs, which might do the trick.

Am I ok running this setup do you guys reckon?

Total setup:

HDTV (HDMI + OPTICAL outputs)
Stereo HiFi CD Player with Phono Out
Phono Turntable using Phono Out (into the HiFi or possibly the new 5.1 receiver)
Blu-Ray Player HDMI Out
Various other HDMI devices (XboxOneS/X, Android TV box, Amazon Fire Stick etc.)
All controlled with a Logitech Harmony remote

I will also be replacing my blu-ray player with an Xbox One S/X and a new 4K TV too at some point very soon, but I'll keep that for a separate thread.

Cheers!

TLDR: How best do I get stereo out from a CD HiFI player into a 5.1 AV Receiver

 

[mothermachine]

you can just run the hi-fi in via phono to the new receiver and turn off all the digital processing gubbins which will give you a pure stereo sound or you can let the digital stuff upmix it into the 3 speakers which sometimes sounds good and sometimes sounds awful. If you are going this route I'd look for a more musical sounding AV receiver as some sound awful Marantz used to be the way to go but this may have changed

Thanks Alex! What I do really want to avoid is having to do anything like disabling certain processing when I want to listen to music. I reckon the hassle of this might not make it feasible, especially for the missus... That's the part of this whole process I'm trying to make sure is seamless. I wonder if this AV receiver I mentioned Pioneer VSX-832/932 is intelligent enough to recognise a simple stereo phono signal and output only to the two front speakers...

 

[mothermachine]

Thanks Tom, Lucid!

Sorry it was a typo on the 820 - it's actually the VSX-932 I'm looking at - fairly top of the line and plenty of ins and outs, which I would like for future proofing. Not much more costly, either.

I am not 100% sure but I reckon a simple Phono connection from HiFi > AV then switch the AV to Stereo Mode should work the way I intend - it would use both front speakers + non-existent Sub, which is ideal.

I am just hoping that my Harmony remote is going to be programmable to add the AV to my music routine, and switch it to Stereo mode, and to add it to my TV/disc/ATV routine and switch it back to surround mode...

 

[mothermachine]

Which model of Marantz, Scam?

 

[mothermachine]

You haven't yet said which Yamaha Hi-Fi so the connections can be checked. That's kind of really crucial, because if there's no way to get audio out of it then you're a bit stuffed.

As a general observation too, you're happy with the sound of the Yamaha, and that's probably a lot to do with the fact its a simple stereo amp. There's very little in the signal path that gets in the way of the music. AV receivers are a different kettle of fish. There's a tonne of digital processing going on plus all the circuits and their associated power supplies all feeding off the one main transformer in an AVR. That pulls the signal down quite a few notches.

Don't take this the wrong way please, but a £330 AVR isn't fairly-top-of-the-line. Even £600 AVRs aren't top of the line. The Pioneer is shoehorning in a lot of features in to what is a reasonable entry-level package, but like most similarly priced receivers the focus is on the whizzy-bang movie effects rather than pure audio fidelity. When you're looking at £500-£600 territory then the designers have some budget left over to tweak the stereo performance. IMO, that's when it's safer to start thinking of the AVR as an amp that could be okay for music too.

Long story short, unless your listening room is a complete acoustic disaster area (square room, tiled floor, bare walls, minimalist furnishing, lots of glass) then you're probably going to hear a difference between stereo from the Yam and stereo via the AVR. How big a difference depends on the AVR and the room. If running the stereo speakers from the AVR messes up the sound, what will you do?

There's a knock-on question from this. If you do decide to keep the quality and the marital bliss by running the Dali's from the Yam then how will you control the volume at movie/TV time?

Unless the Yamaha has a proper pre-out designed to run an external power amp, then any line out it does have will be fixed volume. IOW, the level going to the AVR remains the same whether the Yam is turned up to full or down to nothing. So when you come to put the AVR on, you'll have to juggle two volume controls to keep the centre speaker balanced with the stereo pair. That's going to be interesting for you. A Harmony ain't going to cope with that.

Hey. Thanks for the comprehensive feedback!

My current stereo hifi is a Yamaha CRX-N560D - My room is a very typical mid-terrace living room, i'm probably around 10 feet away from the speakers + TV, wood floor, rug and standard sound stage, so nothing terrible, nothing amazing. And I would not class my audio listening requirements as particularly high at all - music is probably 30% of my usage here with 70% going to films and TV. Would the music audio sound quality from that Pioneer 7.1 be noticeably worse than from my Yamaha stereo? If only subtly worse I can take that, in exchange for proper centre speaker and film audio improvement.

That Yamaha has standard phono speaker outputs. Am I safe to run those into the Phono inputs on the AVR and so avoid any fixed volume issues? As you say if I need to drive the volume controls on both the Yama+Pioneer then I'm screwed there...

Option 2 is to ditch the HiFi altogether and go straight with a blu-ray/xbox for CD playing and get the missus on-board with that. Would make life simpler long-term but short-term....

 

[mothermachine]

Hi Hornet.

Thanks for the heads-up - someone else mentioned this issue already as well.

I don't know if my Yamaha CRX-N560D has pre-power/pre-AMPs and the manual doesn't seem to shed any light. I also don't know if the Pioneer VSX-932 I am looking at has this either, but I DO know that this model has a simple "Stereo" listening mode, which will switch it over to 2 x front + sub, effectively just using my two front speakers, which would be ideal.

The more I look into this the more I think the VSX-932 is a good option, and if it turns out that I can operate both the stereo and the AVR easily with the volume then I will use that setup. If it doesn't, I will ditch the Hifi. Worst case scenario I can also just return the new AVR and re-think.

 

[mothermachine]

I've done the following in order so know what you're thinking

AVR
Added stereo integrated amplifier
Replace AVR with 3 channel Yamaha add on AVR
Added stereo power amplifer to bi-amp stereo speakers
Added stereo power amplifier for center bi-amp
Added stereo power amplifier for rears
Added sterep power amplifier for sides
Replaced 3 channel Yamaha AVR with AV Pre-amp
Then finally split up the two systems in two rooms

I would not ditch the stereo amp for a AVR, as it'll sound worse. Less power than a good amp too.

If you want AVR + stereo amp, then 100% get a stereo amp or replace the stereo amp with the poweramp in function. In bold as this is critical. Buy a universal remote control so it'll send macros (if you can do this) to make your system easier to use. Macros send bunch of commands with one button press.

With Stereo + avr, send all stereo sources to your stereo amp, send all multi-channel sources to your AVR. IN stereo your AVR is switched off. In AV mode, both are on, AVR controls volume on all channels.

Again if you don't have poweramp in function you'll need to mark your stereo amp, typically around 12 o clock, with a bit of tipex or something.

That stereo mode is not a power amp in function.

Hey Hornet. Not gonna lie, confused at this point. Need to read up on all of this in more detail. I do have a Harmony remote that can handle fairly complex macros. To be clear, I'm happy to accept a slight reduction in music audio quality in exchange for a proper centre speaker + proper movie experience. Current most attractive option is to ditch the stereo and just run everything off the AVR, but I'll just need to test the audio quality to ensure it's not unacceptably worse.

 

[mothermachine]

I wouldn't recommend doing that. That stereo amp wiped the floor with the AVR for music. Sound quality, more power, everything just better.

Tangibly worse tho? I can never run that stereo THAT loud anyway due to small house + neighbours. It's rare I can ever push it, and any music therefore, to any kind of level where quality would really matter to that degree. This is where my dilemma lies...

 

[mothermachine]

Thanks Lucid That explains it nicely. Basically I go all-in and replace the Yamaha or I stay as-is then.

I am also eyeing up that Sony, yes, nice bit of kit there. And if it does better in the music department then that could be a great option. I am going to head down to my local RS and see if I can demo both of these and get some general advice on the whole setup.

Thanks again

 

[mothermachine]

buy an AV amp and a new CD/BD player and ditch the stereo (or move it to another room).

This is where I'm heading with this now, I think... for simplicity's sake. I can also then shove the Yamaha in my bedroom with some mini speakers and get a nice upstairs system going, which the missus will appreciate anyway. Could be a win-win...

 

[mothermachine]

Or simply have two systems

Have a nice stereo system, pre-power 2 channel Hi-Fi, maybe sub as well with decent floorstander speakers
And a nice av pre-power 7 channel or atmos home cinema with decent standmount of floorstander speakers

A av pre-power is the same to use as a AVR, if you get a multi-channel power amplifier, and your AV pre has a 12v trigger you don't even need to switch the power amp on

Deffo not enough space to have two sets of speakers. I only have space for 3 physical speakers as it is: 2 x front + 1 x centre. No room for sub, even.

 

[mothermachine]

haha thanks everyone. Yes indeed... for my use case, top of the line is way overkill, and because I'm not able to set a sub in there going 3.0 is my only option. I went into my local RS this morning and discussed everything with a chap there who agreed I've picked out the right components and heading down the right path. I am going to try to get a live demo so I can test the receiver with and without centre channel (so dolby surround V stereo mode). I really don't think that my music enjoyment will suffer much, even at all, going from stereo hifi > AVR setup. My experience with these things, however limited, tells me that the speakers are doing most of the work anyway, rather than the amp itself... so, we shall see.

I do wish RS had a better returns policy 15% restock fee is BIG hit to take if I'm not happy with something, so I might just order online elsewhere so I can keep that option open to me.

 

[mothermachine]

Another solution occurred, re-using current hifi.

OPPO-203 - uhd player has hdmi input and 7.1 pre-amp outputs, and class (evn A/v) leading DAC's - caveat ~£600

at a cheaper £40
Audio Decoder, Tendak Digital 5.1 Audio Decoder Converter Digital Surround Analog Sound Decoder HDMI Audio Decoder Extractor Support Decoding Dolby/DTS/AC3 (6RCA Output)

no information on the dac's these use though and I guess neither would not mix the rear l/r into the front l/r
could test drive the latter from Amazon.

Dude.. thank you. That OPPO... so do I have it right that this would basically remove the need for a separate AV receiver completely? And would it also therefore remove the need for the stereo hifi as well?

Can it just run on its own directly with the 3 x speakers attached, and the TV?

 

[mothermachine]

Thanks chaps. Back to the previous setup it is! I'm getting close to making a decision. Frankly the physical space restrictions are my biggest problem more than anything else.

 

[mothermachine]

Just following up with you guys for whoever might be interested. I ended up going with basically all the kit I mentioned earlier - Sony STL-DR1080 receiver, a Dali Zensor Pico Vokal centre speaker to match my existing Dali Zensor 1 bookshelf speakers for a total of a 3.0 speaker setup, a Panasonic 700B 4k HDR TV, Onkyo C7030 CD player, Panasonic UB300 UHD blu-ray player, Amazon Fire TV box. Running the lot via a mix of various cables.

One very strange issue I had was I ordered a couple of the exact same model of high-speed HDMI cable, different lengths, and only the shorter one works with my setup. The longer one has no signal at all in my setup, but I tested it between the receiver and my 4k laptop and it works just fine... very strange! I sent it back and got a replacement, all good.

Overall I'm really happy with the whole thing. I'm still tweaking the sound a lot - I ran the auto easy calibration for the receiver, with the mic, but I feel like the sound could be a little "wider" from the front speakers, so I'm gradually tweaking as I go. I've been SUPER impressed when testing Blade Runner 2049 4k blu-ray. Ho-lee-mo-lee it looks and sounds amazing. Not a million miles away from my cinema experience... I do wish I had space for a sub, and for rear speakers, but what can you do... gotta work within your limits!

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Cheers,