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Home Theater : The Soundening
Caswynben
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a nice HDTV, a 360 and a bluray player. They all use HDMI and all output nice 5.1/7.1 signals that I would like to take advantage of. So I head to Best Buy and I take a look at their selection of receivers and I find them pretty baffling. I am looking for something mid-range, $300 (without the speakers), and it needs to take an hdmi input, play the audio from that stream, then send that stream on to the TV.
What's confusing me is that the wording on a lot of these sets imply to me that the sound signal is not actually processed, it just passed the 1080p signal through. But why would I want an audio receiver for that?
What's confusing me is that the wording on a lot of these sets imply to me that the sound signal is not actually processed, it just passed the 1080p signal through. But why would I want an audio receiver for that?
Caswynben on
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Do you have speakers now? How many? What kind? 7.1 is useless in anything but a ginormous room with a lot of seats. Easy answer, buy the most expensive Onkyo you can in your range. Look online for cheaper prices. www.monoprice.com for cables.
ElJeffe or someone will come in and tell you more.
the general consensus out of the receiver thread in the tech forum was that a midrange onkyo would be a great starting point to accomplish the above. you could upgrade individual components down the line if you needed.
Being in a rental, I don't want to a) run wires/cut holes/etc b) have giant taped down cordes running everywhere.
There are wireless rears out there, but you would be better off putting that money into a 3.1 system. In my last rental place I ran cable under the carpet.
Hardwood Parkay.
Probably just get a receiver with 2.1 or 3.1 and upgrade it once out of here (don't plan on renting forever).
What you want to avoid is any receiver that only supports "HDMI passthrough". Earlier / cheaper receivers with HDMI support simply acted as dumb switches, dumping the entire HDMI signal of the selected source to your display device, not doing any audio decoding on that signal at all. That leaves you in the situation of running an HDMI cable for video, and a separate optical or coax cable for audio, and yes, that does in fact totally defeat the whole damn point of HDMI.
In terms of brand names to look for, Onkyo has been mentioned, and I like Yamaha receivers too. Denon and Harmon-Kardon receivers are also good in terms of quality, but you pay a lot for the brand and I don't feel that you get much actual improvement for the extra money. Sony receivers are... Ok I think? They seem to be trying to compete on price with Onkyo and Yamaha, but tend to come up short in the features department. You can spend a ridiculous amount of money on audio gear, but the simple truth is that the cheapest solid-brand receiver that has the inputs/outputs you want and the features you need will probably be more than enough to blow your mind the first time you watch a movie with a really good 5.1 track. The first half hour of Saving Private Ryan comes to mind as a good 5.1 tester.
Steam
XBOX
If you also want "lossless" audio, well I don't have a 360 so I don't know what HD audio capabilities it has (if you have the HD-DVD player it probably can pass a lossless audio stream in some fashion). Also the specs of the bluray player will inform its HD audio capabilities, but it's likely it can bitstream the lossless codecs unless it's a low end model. To support hearing lossless audio you'll need an HTR that can decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD/DTS-HD Master Audio. Going to ZDNet and filtering A/V receivers in your price range, these 2 stick out as being able to do lossless decode, though there are likely other options if you hunt. There's probably a Sony in your price range that can decode the lossless codecs, but you may have to spend a bit more (or hunt around the internet for pricing) to find an Onkyo that'll do it.
@Gilbert0: No. Home-theater speakers are supposed to be unpowered. You then spend lots of money on a receiver to POWER those speakers (among other things). How much money you spend is in some part driven by how well/accurately you want those speakers powered. When you go with a wireless setup, you now have to pass that job off to each individual speaker. Guess how well those sets do that? I know of a WIRED speaker set that costs $20,000 to do this well (pro-level amp in each speaker). I can't imagine it sounds noticeably different than a high-end $10,000 using normal wire.
@everyone recommending Onkyo: be careful with their 606 (and supposedly 706) receivers. I just got a 606 and it's working great...however, my DLP doesn't have HDMI. There are some well-documented issues on AVSForum, Newegg, and other customer review sites about serious problems with the Onkyo 606/706 upconversion and even HDMI passthrough. Supposedly lots of buyers wind up with receivers that produce images with blue dots, most noticeably in dark scenes like outer space. I plan on buying a new Panny this summer when they come out and testing this.
PSN: TheScrublet