Upgrading Entry Gear

[Pogre]

Thanks all of you for the advice and suggestions. Definitely giving me plenty to think about and reconsider.
I failed to mention with my original post that this all started from a TV upgrade from 1080 to 4k.... My old TV was getting dark spots on white back ground and 4k has started leveling out as far as working out bugs in new tech.
So my Rotel won't pass through 4k video on HDMI..... That kinda started this whole bug of 'lets look at a total upgrade".... I kinda thought to refine my two channel and HT by more power and mono component electronics.
But I'm seeing that my line of thought may have just been spending money needlessly.
I'm sure I can resolve the Rotel 4k passthrough by purchasing an AVR. Might start there and keep the Rotel working the speakers as normal.... If I buy the Anthem AVM 70, I think that will work for the processing and should be able to keep using the Rotel.... I think......

A new AVR to get you current does make sense to me. Anthem makes great gear too. A bit on the pricey side, but good gear. I'm a big fan of Denon and Marantz also and think their mid tier offerengs with MultEQ XT32 and preouts offer pretty much all most folks will need or use, but if you have the budget and wanna splurge there's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure you have all the connections and options you need. Amp power isn't much of a consideration since you have the Rotel.

I agree with Bill on the subs too. Better to replace that one altogether and get something more suited for the job in your room. In fact it's worth pinching from the receiver budget if it means the difference between 1 sub or a pair, imo. He makes a great point about having subs powerful enough to complement those nice speakers and not lag behind. We don't mean overpower your speakers either. Just enough for support to add real depth and detail to your sound. Once you hear balanced, effortless bass you'll never want to go back. I have a pair of ported 15s and they only draw attention to themselves when I turn them off. You can tell something is missing, but they're never in your face.

 

[Garplo]

Don't throw rocks at me....but I use mainly my computer...... Its a nice(r) computer that I built. My PC is my Home theater system, Music system, Gaming system......... 4k Gaming, 4k movies..... all on a 75' TV.... I love it!!!! I also use Fire Box for Amazon.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Wow. Nice PC. Nothing wrong with a good HTPC. No stone thrown.

 

[lovinthehd]

Don't throw rocks at me....but I use mainly my computer...... Its a nice(r) computer that I built. My PC is my Home theater system, Music system, Gaming system......... 4k Gaming, 4k movies..... all on a 75' TV.... I love it!!!! I also use Fire Box for Amazon.
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I like the Dave's Don't Touch Nothing wrong with using an htpc.

 

[Garplo]

I had a Samsung Blu Ray play but it died and I never replaced it... Dumped the money into the PC and thought it would do anything a Blu Ray could do. But I'm still learning if the PC DAC is as good or worse than a componet DAC on like an AVR.....

 

[lovinthehd]

I had a Samsung Blu Ray play but it died and I never replaced it... Dumped the money into the PC and thought it would do anything a Blu Ray could do. But I'm still learning if the PC DAC is as good or worse than a componet DAC on like an AVR.....

A Samsung bluray player was the only bad experience I had with one....the slow death was painful, too. What bluray drive do you use? Is it writeable? DACs are generally about implementation, not the dac itself which is a commodity these days. Some do complain about noise using a dac in a computer, but its also not a problem for many too. DACs are so over-thought.....

 

[Garplo]

I have always liked Plextor CD/DVD drives so I went with a VinPower BluRay....
I'm still trying to educate myself for digital to analog conversion.....so. I run my sound/video out of my Nvidia video card. The mother board has HD Audio as well, but I figure Nvidia has to be on their game with HDMI so....
I have tried optical outputs but need to 'test' them more to see if I can really hear the difference from the HDMI.
I have alot of music that I ripped to my hard drive years and years ago.... Been slowly re-ripping alot of them as lossless. So I'm still doing the long slow swirl down the rabbit hole......

 

[Pogre]

I have all of my music ripped from cds (lossless) on a pc and it's my main source, works great for me. I just HDMI everything and don't worry about DACs or other connections. That's a rabbit hole that I think is a big waste of time and effort. DACs are a very mature technology by now and any measurable differences are almost all outside our ability to hear anyway. You'll just drive yourself nuts trying to decide which is better and at worst, end up unnecessarily spending a bunch of money chasing inaudible differences. Once you have sufficient power and the right features, speakers and subs are where it's at.

 

[Eppie]

I had a Samsung Blu Ray play but it died and I never replaced it... Dumped the money into the PC and thought it would do anything a Blu Ray could do. But I'm still learning if the PC DAC is as good or worse than a componet DAC on like an AVR.....

If you're running HDMI from the PC to the Rotel, then the Rotel should be doing the D.A.C. and the PC DAC is not involved, unless you are also running line level audio out from the PC to the Rotel. The Rotel will likely have a better DAC unless you purchased a dedicated audio card for the PC for that purpose. I ran Plex on my PC to a PS3 connected to the AVR but changed to a Roon Server for audio with a Raspberry Pi running the Roon client software feeding the AVR via HDMI, since the PC is in another room. You would just need the Roon Server on your PC. The theory behind Roon is pretty interesting although the improvement in audio was hard to detect on my system. What I like is the gapless playback, controlling Roon with my cell phone, and the excellent way that Roon manages to randomly select music in similar genres. I also went through the long process of re-ripping my CD collection to go lossless, but it was well worth it. Mp3s do not play back gapless, and I find the gaps on live albums or where songs blend together to be very annoying. Roon is not cheap for a lifetime license, so I went for a one year trial but will likely get the full license later.

From what I gathered from another thread, you're likely better to stick with HDMI rather than play with optical, especially if you go to a new AVR with the latest HDMI spec. If you have any mutli-channel music tracks you'll need HDMI to decode them properly. Optical will do 2-channel ok but is lossy with multi-channel. Nice PC BTW.

 

[lovinthehd]

Another vote for the more capable hdmi connection....

A few years ago I had a knee problem so spent the couch time finishing ripping my entire cd collection (had only done some and itunes had screwed much of that up) to flac. I immediately rip a cd on any new purchase (or download in some cases but still mostly via cd). I still play some other optical discs that are a pain to rip, tho (bluray, dvd, SACD). Foobar2000 works great for me managing the music and sending it around my network. Bubbleupnp app on the android phone to direct things is handy, too.

 

[Kleinst]

At 89 dB efficiency your speakers don't require a ton of power to get plenty loud. For instance, if you sit 10 feet from your speakers you can hit 92 dB at your seat with only 10 watts. That's very loud. In fact it's unsafe to listen at that level for more than a few hours before doing permanent damage. Any power left on reserve after that is just plain unused, whether you have 75 watts or 500 watts. It doesn't add anything to performance. How far do you sit from your speakers, anyway? Just curious.

Check out this spl calculator. It's not going to be dead on accurate for your room and speakers but will give you an idea of power requirements. Most people rarely use more than a couple of watts.

Peak SPL Calculator

Power requirements do go up exponentially as you turn up the dial, doubling for every 3 dB gained, but 89 dB efficiency is really good right out of the gates.

That’s so eye opening. 10 watts to get to 92db!! What a reality check.

and Pogre, while you keep buying speakers, I keep buying AMPs I clearly don’t need. It’s a sickness

 

[Garplo]

If you're running HDMI from the PC to the Rotel, then the Rotel should be doing the D.A.C. and the PC DAC is not involved, unless you are also running line level audio out from the PC to the Rotel. The Rotel will likely have a better DAC unless you purchased a dedicated audio card for the PC for that purpose. I ran Plex on my PC to a PS3 connected to the AVR but changed to a Roon Server for audio with a Raspberry Pi running the Roon client software feeding the AVR via HDMI, since the PC is in another room. You would just need the Roon Server on your PC. The theory behind Roon is pretty interesting although the improvement in audio was hard to detect on my system. What I like is the gapless playback, controlling Roon with my cell phone, and the excellent way that Roon manages to randomly select music in similar genres. I also went through the long process of re-ripping my CD collection to go lossless, but it was well worth it. Mp3s do not play back gapless, and I find the gaps on live albums or where songs blend together to be very annoying. Roon is not cheap for a lifetime license, so I went for a one year trial but will likely get the full license later.

From what I gathered from another thread, you're likely better to stick with HDMI rather than play with optical, especially if you go to a new AVR with the latest HDMI spec. If you have any mutli-channel music tracks you'll need HDMI to decode them properly. Optical will do 2-channel ok but is lossy with multi-channel. Nice PC BTW.

I see what you mean. My video card only has one HDMI output. The mobo has another HDMI output but that will be a different audio source on the PC and different brand (Nvidia vs Realtec). Not sure if that would work, never tried it.
I used to have all my HDMI inputs going directly to the Rotel on separate input channels. Then out of the Rotel via ARC to the TV. But since the Rotel won't pass 4k through the ARC now, I opted to hook all inputs to the new TV and run HDMI from the TV ARC down to the Rotel ARC. (now that I type that last sentence I'm wondering if I did that connection properly....Maybe I should move it off the ARC on the Rotel).
Or buy an HDMI splitter like a Black Box 4K....

 

[Eppie]

I see what you mean. My video card only has one HDMI output. The mobo has another HDMI output but that will be a different audio source on the PC and different brand (Nvidia vs Realtec). Not sure if that would work, never tried it.
I used to have all my HDMI inputs going directly to the Rotel on separate input channels. Then out of the Rotel via ARC to the TV. But since the Rotel won't pass 4k through the ARC now, I opted to hook all inputs to the new TV and run HDMI from the TV ARC down to the Rotel ARC. (now that I type that last sentence I'm wondering if I did that connection properly....Maybe I should move it off the ARC on the Rotel).
Or buy an HDMI splitter like a Black Box 4K....

Whether that makes sense or not would depend on a few things. Like whether the Nvidia was 4k capable or you upgraded the graphics card the same time as the TV, and are your sources 4k? If your source material is 4k, then going direct to the TV makes sense, otherwise you would be downscaling the video to 1080p on the Rotel and then upscaling back on the TV (until you upgrade to a 4k AVR). If the source material and the Nvidia are not 4k then keeping things connected to the Rotel is fine and the TV would handle all video upscaling at the end.

Whether you even need ARC depends. Here's a beginner's guide on cnet.
https://www.cnet.com/news/hdmi-audio-return-channel-and-earc-for-beginners/
What ARC does is that it allows you to use your TV as an audio source back to the AVR, even though you are feeding audio and video to the TV from the AVR. If all sources were connected to the AVR, but the TV had Netflix built in or a Roku plugged into it, ARC allows the TV to supply the Netflix audio back to the AVR without using the optical out on the TV, so one less cable. It has the added benefit of handling multi-channel audio over HDMI instead of lossy compression over optical. For all other sources it doesn't care about ARC. So ARC has nothing to do with 4k. It just allows the audio to flow both ways in one cable.

I mentioned all that because you talked about passing 4k through ARC. The two are not related. For 4k, you need to look at source material first. With a 4k TV but non-4k AVR, only the 4k sources like a 4k cable box or 4k blue-ray need to be connected to the TV. Likewise if your PC has a graphics card that outputs 4k *and* your video files are encoded in 4k, then connect to the TV (hence why you need to use the Nvidia HDMI, not the motherboard's; it has to do with the video, not the audio). If your PC is set to output 1080p, then the TV is upscaling the video and it doesn't matter if you connect to the TV or AVR. If the Nvidia is 4k capable, you have to change the display settings on the PC to match the new TV. If your video files are not 4k, then it's also a question of where you want the video upscaling to occur, on the computer or on the TV? That's probably a matter of trying both and seeing what looks better, especially with fast panning.

Clear as mud right? Sorry if that got a bit long, but I got the impression that there was some confusion about what the ARC connection was doing and whether it applies to your setup.

 

[Garplo]

No thats a great explanation.... My descriptions are bad....but I meant what you knew!!!!......
The new TV is 4k capable. The video card is 4K capable. And I'm just building a library of 4k movies, but still watch older movies in 1080.... Still looks ok until I get a 4k version.
What I meant to say and you understood correctly.... is that my Rotel is too old and not capable of passing through a 4k signal or interpreting a 4k signal. 4K wasn't a thing yet when I bought it.... so... Using my TV as my display seems to add a bit of head scratching when I want to have good two channel and home theater....but I will figure out to hook everything up and get it to work right, or how I think is right sooner or later.
( currently I can listen to music from all 7 speakers or the Rotel can switch to 2 channel audio, which I want to improve the 2 channel audio).
I'm learning what work arounds I have for options..... thanks to you guys and all the topics on this forum. I have clarified alot of my own misconceptions just in the last week or so.
I may still upgrade some components, but now I'm learning what I should expect from new gear and how what I currently have can be improved. I have dug out my manuals for the Rotel and working back through settings currently. Some items make a bit more sense (amp headroom, dynamic range and compression, SPL ....etc.)