Can someone explain AV receivers to me?

hornetstinger said:
For some movies I down mix, sometimes you get a classic movie and it just sounds wrong in 5.1. Or if it's a bad mix, it's better in stereo.

Also it means not switching on the amplifier for the surrounds, if I don't feel the film is worth having it in 5.1. Or if I am watching a older movie I use a front three speaker mode.

Plus some material is just stereo, ie CD/tape/vinylj. So I listen to stereo. Although I could use a DSP which does a excellent job of upscaling stereo to 7.1- it's not a crappy DSP.
Click to expand...

direct mode (pure) and downmixing are fine.

in fact music sounds much better in 2.0 than even 2.1 never mind 5.1, so yes it should be kept as such and the reason why people have floorstanders within their 5.1 setups so when they do use stereo they get the full range through their fronts.

however i think OP was along the lines of, if watching the news he wants to just use the built in tv speakers. however i may be wrong but i think that is what he wants to do and that is possible but he would need to plug stuff into his tv instead of the AVR and then use ARC or optical out to the AVR.

I can do this on my tv, I can use either the AVR or built in speakers however I always use the AVR wife tends to use the built in speakers as she doesn't know how it all works. Everything sets itself up automatically thanks to HDMI link. If my tv is turned on first then built in speakers are used and it sends a signal to the AVR to turn on and pass through the sky signal. If sky box is turned on first it wakes the AVR which then wakes the TV and then my seperates is used.

It's pretty smart how it all works. However if I use the built in SMART sytem within the tv I need to manually tell the AVR to listen out for ARC.
 
Only time I adjust my AVR is when I have a party, then I put it on all channel stereo mode so there's music everywhere! Other than that I've never found the need to touch it at all.

I *never* don't use it though - even watching the news in the morning I use the AVR. It just sounds so vastly better than the TV's built in sound there's no reason not to use it.
 
dont know why anybody bothers with direct on an avr. direct assumes you have a perfect room and perfect speakers and bypasses all of the digital trickery an avr provides to get around not having those, ie; speaker time alignment, phase correction, tone mapping..basically everything a half decent AVR will do when you plug the mic in and run auto setup. People like to turn all that off because its 'pure'. In reality, few people have the space or the speakers required to get away with it.
 
james.miller said:
dont know why anybody bothers with direct on an avr. direct assumes you have a perfect room and perfect speakers and bypasses all of the digital trickery an avr provides to get around not having those, ie; speaker time alignment, phase correction, tone mapping..basically everything a half decent AVR will do when you plug the mic in and run auto setup. People like to turn all that off because its 'pure'. In reality, few people have the space or the speakers required to get away with it.
Click to expand...

Have you heard a good 2 channel system? My stereo has no features like what is in a AVR. No tone controls either. Just input switch and volume. Sounds fantastic.
 
of course i have. But i still dont agree with it. people are too happy with imperfect speakers in an imperfect room for sake of being able to say 'hey i don't use any tone controls'.

Are you using two acoustically flat speakers with a perfect phase response across the frequency range in an acoustically dead listening room? because if you don't then just how faithful do you think your setup really is?

But what do i know, i happily use an EQ with my hd650s and that's enough to make most 'audiophiles' loose their **** all on its own.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom