Bit of help required

miikeeyy92

miikeeyy92

miikeeyy92

Associate
Joined
19 Dec 2010
Posts
564
Location
The south
Hi All,

My father fitted himself out with a AV system many moons ago and has ever since been an avid collector of is favourite concerts on bluray (noting that he is aware of DTS-HD/Dolby TrueHD audio etc).

I've only just noticed on closer inspection that his AV amp does not handle HD audio and its killing me that he's buying blurays for the audio, but not getting it.

His current set up is B&W MT50 speakers, with a B&W AS-1 Sub (I think), and a Yamaha amp (cant remember the exact), and an additional amp driving 2.0 in a second room.

I'd love to purchase him an AV amp that does HD audio in 5.1, with additional zone 2 support for a 2.0 in a second room. He needs only 2 HDMI inputs & 1 output.

Does anyone have a) any suggestions on a reasonable amp, and b) any idea how I can test how the amp sounds with the speakers without him knowing?

Thanks.
 
would you get better audio quality&value if he had a dac that would accept the 2.0 HD audio track optically from the bluray player and feed that to existing Av & regular amp via phono inputs ?
... are the 5.1 DTS-HD tracks on concerts really recorded in 5.1, or are they mostly 'engineered' from the 2.0 ? picking an arbitrary concert both 5.1&2.0 tracks have their merits.
 
What speakers pair well with what avr is greatly overplayed.

Last years mid teir offerings from denon/marantz can be had for cheap now (second hand)

Denon 3200
Marantz 6010

Both have a 2nd hdmi out and 8 hdmi in. 7 at the back 1 at the front. Both play all hd formats including atmos and dts:x.
 
jpaul said:
would you get better audio quality&value if he had a dac that would accept the 2.0 HD audio track optically from the bluray player and feed that to existing Av & regular amp via phono inputs ?
... are the 5.1 DTS-HD tracks on concerts really recorded in 5.1, or are they mostly 'engineered' from the 2.0 ? picking an arbitrary concert both 5.1&2.0 tracks have their merits.
Click to expand...

He likes having 5.1 output as it fills the living room nicely, and much prefers it to 2.0. I know what you mean about the 'are they true 5.1' but he has so many blurays its just easier to go with assuming they are true HD tracks. To be fair I dont think he could tell the difference between a 2.0 track filled to 5.1 by say my RXV677 and a true 5.1 track, but its not something I want to get in to with him, its easier just to get an amp that plays the 5.1 bluray tracks!

signs said:
Is the amp displaying PCM ?
Click to expand...

Couldn't tell you from memory I am afraid.

VincentHanna said:
Though I do use DTS-HD/Dolby TrueHD etc, I bet in a blind test I would be hard pushed to really tell the difference between those and standard DD/DTS 5.1.....
Click to expand...

This is a good point, included is the fact that he may not be able to tell the difference, but it just kills me knowing that he thinks he gets the HD tracks. I'm hoping that he would go 'oh wow what a difference' but then theres no telling how good his ears are!

FurryLemon said:
What speakers pair well with what avr is greatly overplayed.

Last years mid teir offerings from denon/marantz can be had for cheap now (second hand)

Denon 3200
Marantz 6010

Both have a 2nd hdmi out and 8 hdmi in. 7 at the back 1 at the front. Both play all hd formats including atmos and dts:x.
Click to expand...

I shall check these both out, do they have 2 zone?
 
I'm selling my Yamaha RX-V667 which I'm led to believe supports Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD high-definition audio decoding.

I've put up a for sale thread, bound to be plenty of other options from OCUK members as well.
 
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