Advice on my first av receiver

[Nerdy]

I went looking around today at some local places and found two av receivers that I thought I could use but I'm not familiar enough to know which is better.

They are a onkyo tx-ds575x $39.99 and a rca rt2500 for $24.00. I know they are older but I think they should work, I plan on hooking all my inputs to my tv and use it's coaxial digital out set to Raw so it should pass all 5.1 through easily.

They are cheap because they are at a local goodwill, so I figure I'll test the one I get and return if there are issues and if you could give me some hints on what to look for that's be nice.

 

[fmw]

The better approach is to put the AV receiver at the center of the system rather than at the end of the chain. Your input components should connect to the AV receiver with a connection going to the TV. Going the way you intend will probably only provide stereo sound rather than multi-channel sound. Check with your TV manual. The receivers in question are pre HDMI so be sure your input sources all have component video outputs. I would strongly advise looking for more modern units with HDMI capability if that is possible.

 

[Nerdy]

I would prefer to save money where I can, and I know the newer ones would run higher. I'm going to double check on the tv but from what it looks like the Raw mode should basically just repeat all the information it gets on the hdmi inputs without doing anything with it. If that's the way it works then the only issue would be if my tv is sent 5.1.

I check the tv I'll report back if its output works as I thought.

 

[Swerd]

They are a onkyo tx-ds575x $39.99 and a rca rt2500 for $24.00. I know they are older but I think they should work, I plan on hooking all my inputs to my tv and use it's coaxial digital out set to Raw so it should pass all 5.1 through easily.

The better approach is to put the AV receiver at the center of the system rather than at the end of the chain. Your input components should connect to the AV receiver with a connection going to the TV. Going the way you intend will probably only provide stereo sound rather than multi-channel sound. Check with your TV manual…

What fmw said is right.

AV receivers were designed to be the audio processing and switch center for an AV system. Let the AV receiver's processor chips do all the digital processing and decoding. For audio processing, the AVR's chips are probably more capable than the TV's, even if they are older.

Trying to get a TV to do all that will be unsatisfactory and frustrating at best, and at worst, impossible. Treat the TV as an independent audio source, and run its audio by digital cable to the AVR, just as if it were a CD or DVD player.

Besides your TV, what other inputs do you have? If they have video content as well as audio, you can run the video signal either directly to your TV, or run them through the AVR. It depends on what connections are available on those AVRs. In the long run, switching everything through the AVR will be simpler to operate on a daily basis, even if its more complex to hook up initially.

 

[Nerdy]

The TV shouldn't be doing any audio processing at all. The TV has two digital output modes, pcm and raw. I've done some looking, and what it appears is that over coax pcm is only stereo however raw should just be whatever was sent into the TV via hdmi without any audio processing on the TV.

Also from what I have heard not many AVRs allow you to use the video and select source when it's off, that would be an inconvenience for me. I don't always want to use my surround sound, like for most TV shows.

I have, at the moment, a Cable Box, my Xbox 360, my Raspberry Pi (media center) hooked up to the TV via hdmi. I also have a PS2, Gamecube, 2 Xboxs, and an N64 hooked up to a small video switch, using standard RCA cables. I plan in the future hooking up more things via hdmi and when I do using a passive hdmi switch that will switch based on what is in use at the time.

I tested my parents TV this morning (I have an identical model), which is hooked up to a Sony AVR (I'll update with model # if need be), and using a Blu Ray player and a Blu Ray that has 5.1 audio. With the Blu Ray player set to output 7.1 PCM my TV only passed Stereo PCM to the AVR at 48000khz, the same thing happened when I switched off 92000khz downsampling (I figure it wasn't really a factor). I could tell because the AVR had Pro Logic lit up, and I know that Pro Logic is for enhancing stereo to sound better on a 5.1 system. However, when I changed the audio out setting on the Blu Ray player to Bitstream HD, the TV still had sound and it passed 5.1 to the AVR. I could tell because the AVR switched to having Dolby Digital lit up and the rear speakers changed from just having them marked as Surround to a full 5.1 system. I checked on the Blu Ray every time what audio stream it was set to, through most of the testing it was set to 01/03 Dolby Digital. When I set it to 02/03 DTS HD, it didn't output properly and the AVR put that it was receiving PCM again.

EDIT:
The numbers on the tracks of audio I believe are just basically the stream number, 1 of 3 etc.

 

[Grador]

Well Nerdy, I think you understand that fmw and swerd are absolutely correct, that a modern AVR would make things much simpler, and probably yield better results, but as you're looking at $30 units I'm going to assume that an HDMI receiver is just flat out of the equation.

What you're looking at doing will probably work a fair bit of the time, but not all. It sounds like your TV will happily pass through Dolby Digital, a feature common on older TVs but not more recent ones (hence fmw thinking that it would not work). Up until a few years ago most HDMI receivers could not pull the audio off the signal, so they were simply passing the audio through to the TV and the TV would send the audio back over a digital connection very similar to what you want to do right now.

The problem you're going to run into is that it doesn't seem that your TV knows what to do with DTS at all. If you have a bluray disk that only contains a DTS track your system will be limited to stereo sound, and will only do this because everything is smart enough to fall back to stereo. HDTV broadcasts use DD, so that will never be an issue.

 

[Nerdy]

Well Nerdy, I think you understand that fmw and swerd are absolutely correct, that a modern AVR would make things much simpler, and probably yield better results, but as you're looking at $30 units I'm going to assume that an HDMI receiver is just flat out of the equation.

What you're looking at doing will probably work a fair bit of the time, but not all. It sounds like your TV will happily pass through Dolby Digital, a feature common on older TVs but not more recent ones (hence fmw thinking that it would not work). Up until a few years ago most HDMI receivers could not pull the audio off the signal, so they were simply passing the audio through to the TV and the TV would send the audio back over a digital connection very similar to what you want to do right now.

The problem you're going to run into is that it doesn't seem that your TV knows what to do with DTS at all. If you have a bluray disk that only contains a DTS track your system will be limited to stereo sound, and will only do this because everything is smart enough to fall back to stereo. HDTV broadcasts use DD, so that will never be an issue.

I can't really be certain about the TV not being able to pass DTS because the AVR that it was hooked up to is a very old Sony that my parents have had for years. Since DTS only came along around HD-DVD and Blu ray it could just be that the AVR doesn't support it and the TV converts it for it or the DVD player only sends the PCM knowing that the AVR doesn't support it. Also I'm not sure if I'd have to be too worried because my plans for the most part are that my Raspberry Pi (running XBMC) will play the movies and I could re-encode the DTS into another format that is compatible.

I'm sorry if it's really weird that I'm trying to go so cheap but I don't really like the idea of paying a ton for just one component of my surround sound system. I'm trying to build a very cheap but good sounding system, so I'm going to places with used models that should still work fine. I've read some good things about both these models, but I don't know which may be better.

BTW, here are the manuals for both: Onkyo, RCA

At a pawn shop near my house I did check out a few models including one that had several hdmi inputs, they mostly ranged in the high $100s.

 

[Grador]

DTS came along with DVD. DTS-HD MA can be played back as DTS by anything that supports good old fashioned DTS. If the TV did pass it on it would have, and the receiver would have failed to play it back. The older digital connection were one way only, so the source (TV) wouldn't know that the receiver was incapable of playing.

Given that PCM was played back it means that the TV/bluray player determined that DTS could not be used by the TV.

 

[Nerdy]

DTS came along with DVD. DTS-HD MA can be played back as DTS by anything that supports good old fashioned DTS. If the TV did pass it on it would have, and the receiver would have failed to play it back. The older digital connection were one way only, so the source (TV) wouldn't know that the receiver was incapable of playing.

Given that PCM was played back it means that the TV/bluray player determined that DTS could not be used by the TV.

That is not a given, like I said it is quite old. I do know it supports Dolby Digital Surround but I don't know how to tell if it supports DTS. That still may be the problem. Also this still doesn't answer which of those would be better.

EDIT: Nevermind, I checked and the AVR has DTS written on it. However, that doesn't mean it still isn't just a problem with the setup

 

[Grador]

That is not a given, like I said it is quite old. I do know it supports Dolby Digital Surround but I don't know how to tell if it supports DTS. That still may be the problem. Also this still doesn't answer which of those would be better.

EDIT: Nevermind, I checked and the AVR has DTS written on it. However, that doesn't mean it still isn't just a problem with the setup

You need to reread what I wrote, it is a given. If the Tv supported DTS it would have passed it through and the AVR would have either decoded it or failed to decode it.

As to which unit is better? I would probably avoid the RCA, but frankly either would probably do you just as well.

 

[Nerdy]

I understand, I double checked that right now. It's frustrating because I don't particularly want to fork over a ton of money for something with HDMI inputs. I also don't know how it would be more convenient to run all my connections through the AVR, from what I heard that means it'd have to be on to switch between video.

This project was more of a tiny little thing, not a high end system. I was going to put it together for my rather small office, that I use as a gaming and TV room. So I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do at this point.

 

[Grador]

Well I think you've got all the information you'll need to make this decision, in the end it's all yours.

 

[Nerdy]

Well, based on what I've heard: Balls to this, I'm going to put this off until I'll get more out of it and have more money to put into it. I'm going to keep my parents surround system set up that way because the lossless quality of the DTS-HD is really not going to be heard, I bet I could barely (if at all) tell the difference.