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I am geared up to watch Lord of the Rings III this weekend, I can't wait! If I may chime in for a minute regarding buying the Denon mic question to calibrate your system. I don't see a reason NOT to buy it. Autocalibration is useful to determine speaker distances (at least the 7 main...

Buddy; This may sound funny, but if Yamaha/Denon for example where to offer their flagship receivers as processors only, they would save hardly any cost since they would incur less sales volume of units and thus part cost and labor would be higher. But yes, imagine how much more seriously...

Yes wire gauge is the predominant metric in speaker cables. You want a cable with the lowest DC resistance. Also, the conductors should be as close together as possible, but not too extreme such as a flat ribbon cable due to excessive capacitance. I recommend perusing our cable article, but...

Actually we often list the equipment under review in our reference systems. The key is if it actually stays there :D In our case , being the obsessive audioholics we are, gear staying in one of our reference system for longer than six months speaks volumes.

5.1 Surround Sound Home Theater Speaker System Shootout!

I partly agree here that most of the Japanese electronics I have reviewed use JRC opamps. While they are not bad opamps by any means, I would also prefer some good Burr Brown or Analog Devices that have lower noise floor. I also agree here, the Cirrus Logic processors from that era do have...

I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement, especially since most separate processors at the price range of a flagship receiver lack the processing power, and configurability of most top notch flagship receivers. I think of todays super receivers as a superb processor with a free amp...

Good news to report! Denon sent me the latest DVD-5900 with i-link enabled. I succesfully linked the 5900 to the Z9 and decoded: DD, DTS DVD-A SACD in all its glory with bass management, digital delay compensation, and excellent fidelity. My have we come a long way. IMO if you are...

Thats fine and the cable you have now should be ok for reasonably short runs. Its not a bad cable and the price isn't outlandish. Hey there are some exotic cables that I have measured that would fair poorly against those and at a much higher price. At least THX checked them out to ensure they...

Rommel; I posted the article about Spiral Shields. As you can see by this article Spiral Shields are not a good idea for video cables. By themselves, they offer very little protection. A good video cable should have a combo of braid and foil or at a few braided shield layers.

Its just standard 16AWG Zip cord from what I can see. I would personally opt for 10-12AWG Zip cord instead since it will have lower resistance and inductance.

If those are your choices and you don't mind sacrificing a few features such as: 1) YPAO 2) PLIIx 3) Component Video Upconversion and you plan on using the internal amps of the receiver, Then I would pick the Z1 in a heartbeat! The Z1 has a better amp section, DAC's and overall...

I guess you can say we are also fans of RBH Sound speakers as evident of our three primary reference systems are comprised of their products ;) Check out our reviews in our loudspeaker section to see how they perform: Loudspeaker Reviews

During my brief direct comparisons of CD playback via the analog outputs of both players, I preferred the Rotel over the Sony personally, however it was very close. I mostly use my Sony SACD player for SACD duty or 5 changer mode for parties and such. If I had it to do over again, I would...

They offer that connector on their lower model cable "Star Flex" as well. I will be measuring that cable in the next week or so. I think it will measure quite well based on its gauge and geometry. Realize most people don't want to terminate their own cables so I think you can see the appeal...

Though I don't always like to admit this, Steve is my brother ;) Thanks for the compliments. Ok here is a quick take: This is from an excerpt from an article I am working on with Industry EMC Expert Henry Ott.

Rommel; It's funny that you are inquiring about spiral shield cables since I am authoring a very detailed article about them and will publish it soon. Bottom line is spiral shields by themselves are not very effective and many companies use them because they are cheap cables to produce and...

I had an industry source confirm this as well. I will update the Z9 checklist to illustrate it is SACD ready.

Guys thanks for the updates. I got my upgraded DVD-5900 today from Denon. However, according to them, it will not pass DSD via firewire just yet since it is not provisioned thru Sony. This is why I am at a loss regarding the Pioneer you guys are reporting is passing SACD. I suppose I will...

SACD has not yet been legally provisioned for firewire pass thru. So as far as I know, you shouldn't have SACD output via ilink on any player. I will be getting an upgraded DVD-5900 shortly to test ilink with the Z9 as well as some special software to beta test SACD via Dlink3 for Denon 5803A...