All in one home cinema with DTS HD or Dolby TrueHD

Genoma

Genoma

Genoma

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Is there a combined bluray, amp & speaker system worth considering that does uncompressed audio (DTS HD or TrueHD)?

Or is the general view to get these separate?
 
Get them separate. The all-in-one players always have rubbish sound systems, and have issues with connecting other sources (ie they don't).

Even a cheap amp & speakers kit from Richer Sounds that costs a couple of hundred quid will give you massively better sound, and will allow you to connect other devices. Then a blue-ray player will cost you £50-100.
 
As above, they suck. You can get good one-box home theatre systems (minus BD player) from the likes of Onkyo and Yamaha but anything that has a player too tends to be compromised in some way.
 
Just a quick, illustrative selection and there may be better, similarly priced options, but something like the below would be much more future proof than an all in one type system.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/blu-ray/panasonic/dmpbd81/pana-dmpbd81
http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/onkyo/txsr333/onky-txsr333-blk
http://www.richersounds.com/product/speaker-packages/yamaha/nsp40/yama-nsp40-blk

Just over £300, but much more expandable/upgradeable and better value in the long run. I went on the assumption that the OP wants to spend as little as possible, but obviously this may not be the case.
 
Thanks guys just toying with the idea at the moment so doing a bit of research. Budget would probably be around £400, and the bluray player isn't that important as I store blurays on HDD played through a small HTPC. So what does £400 in amp and speakers get me? Any "smart" features are irrelevant with the HTPC, but must be 5.1 speakers.
 
Genoma said:
Thanks guys just toying with the idea at the moment so doing a bit of research. Budget would probably be around £400, and the bluray player isn't that important as I store blurays on HDD played through a small HTPC. So what does £400 in amp and speakers get me? Any "smart" features are irrelevant with the HTPC, but must be 5.1 speakers.
Click to expand...
Features-wise the speakers will be 5.1, so a centre plus 4 surround speakers and a subwoofer. The AV receiver will have inputs for all the commonly used connector types (analogue stereo, optical, digital coax, HDMI) and with adapter cables you'll be able to also connect other peripherals such as tablets and phones: This will cover you for everything from old legacy AV gear through to the latest AV sources.

Once your gear is connected, then the next feature-sets you're interested in is power and decoding.

Those all-in-ones with the built-in disc player boast some pretty impressive looking wattage figures. When you compare that against a typical AV Receiver then it looks like the slimline disc player holds all the aces. However, the figures are a smoke and mirrors trick. How they're measured and the way they then derive a result is a magnificent work of fiction. If you want the details then I can explain, but the bottom line is that you can pretty much take the claimed total wattage figure and divide by 10. You then need to further divide it by the number of speakers being driven (5 usually)

AV Receivers deliver a greater amount of real power. They're still subject to some optimistic calculations in some of the specs, but if you read the "Rated Output Power (20Hz-20kHz, 2ch driven)" figure then that's a pretty accurate indicator. Running 5 channels in the same way will produce a drop in power because it's being spread across more speakers, but you're still looking getting about 60-70% of the claimed 2ch power so long as it was measured at a low THD. So, an AV receiver delivers far greater levels of real world useable power. That's good news for dynamics which is the ability of the receiver to cope with big instantaneous surges in volume for things like explosions or peaks in music. It means that the receiver is less likely to distort when the going gets tough. The all-in-one kit will run out of steam and start to sound harsh and unpleasant at much lower volume levels.

That's the power differences sorted out. Now let's look at what happens with the decoding.

First, your typical AV Receiver: It has everything. At the top end then you have DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD both covered. It will also handle PCM multichannel for when you're connecting devices such as PS4. There are times when allowing the source device to decode audio is the best option. Next, legacy audio is covered with DD and DTS, and you have Dolby ProLogic II (DPLII) for turning basic stereo signals in to surround. On top of this you have further modes optimised for music and for gaming. You'll probably have these in both Dolby ProLogic and DTS Neo versions. This means that pretty much anything you throw at the amp can be handled and the amp will either do so automatically or give you the option of choosing between some very effective processing algorithms.

Behind the scenes you'll often find that AV receivers offer greater precision in the way they set up, and have a wider array of controls for customising the way the system deals with signals. For example, TV audio can be set to be decoded as DLP II Movie by default unless the signal from the TV audio out is Dolby Digital 5.1

Compare and contrast this with the options in an all-in-one. At £400 you're likely to be looking at a system with a couple of inputs as well as the disc tray as a source. While the system may handle HD audio and DD/DTS and maybe even ProLogic, you might be surprised to find there's some holes and omissions in the pattern. For example, the external HDMI inputs don't allow HD audio decoding or even basic ProLogic.

Next there's the set-up controls. It's common to find that the settings for speaker distances are much coarser, so it's more difficult to get precise effects placement.

I've only scratched the surface, but I hope it's enough for you to see that you are dealing with two very different types of system.
 
Very much appreciated, great read thanks!

I am generally pretty sharp when it comes to tech, however I've never been a real audiophile and pretty shallow knowledge with sound systems. About 3 years ago I got a Sony all in one system for the living room which I've been happy with but I really fancy taking advantage of lossless decoding which it doesn't do, hence my query.

Really appreciate the input, the amp and speakers above are pretty tempting! :) I take it the RX-V477 does HD audio via HDMI ?
 
Pretty much every current major brand standalone AV receiver with HDMI inputs will do HD audio decoding. In fact it's pretty hard now to find a Pioneer / Denon / Onkyo / Sony / Yahama / Harman Kardon that doesn't, even the cheapest.

The rare exception would be the odd entry-level AV Receiver & speaker kit sold as a manufacturer's bundle. The only one that springs to mind is the Yamaha YHT1810 @ £250

If in doubt though, it's easy enough to read down the spec list for any of the receivers. You'll find that all the decoding modes will be listed.
 
I'd imagine you would have to spend a fair bit more than £400 to hear the difference between dd/dts and the hd variants. Or that is the general consensus. Luckily any receiver from the last 3-4 years tend to do hd audio anyway. DTS with great speakers will sound better than DTS-HD with worse speakers.
 
Yep, even my 2010 Onkyo AVR + speakers bundle does the HD formats. Probably doesn't make much noticeable difference on my particular set-up but it is nice seeing the HD format lights come on!
 
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