A/V receiver without a tuner??

[thecoolguy11]

Are there any good A/V receivers out there without a tuner? I really do not need a tuner in my A/V receiver , and if eliminating the tuner gives me a better choice for the same price, I'd only be two happy. Please help

 

[Rob Babcock]

Sure, lots of them. They're called "integrated amps."

 

[av_phile]

Are there any good A/V receivers out there without a tuner? I really do not need a tuner in my A/V receiver , and if eliminating the tuner gives me a better choice for the same price, I'd only be two happy. Please help

Integrated multichannel amps are a lot fewer and can get more expensive than receivers for the same power and features. Those tuners in receivers are almost freebies thrown in. Actually, I find them irrelevant in an HT environment. When was the last time you listened to an FM broadcast in a theater? In 5.1? But like any freebies, there's nothing to complain.

 

[thecoolguy11]

Are there any more differences?

Is the abscence of a tuner the only difference or the A/V receiver has other features that the integrated amp has missing? I guess what I am trying to ask is that, am I loosing any performance or features by chosing an integrated amp vs. a a/v receiver? Where can I start looking for good integrated amps?

 

[markw]

One thing you lose.

Choice. Count how many AV receivers you can think of? Now, how many A/V integrated amps can you think of? Personally, I can't think of any.

Now, if you want to think in terms of separate pre/processors and power amps, then that's another story. But, you also up the ante considerably.

 

[JoeE SP9]

I believe that MarkW is correct. I am not aware of any AV integrated amps. IMHO the advantage to using an integrated amp over a receiver is no money (yours) is wasted on a tuner section that may not have sonics all that good in the first place. Most of the manufacturers that make integrated amps try to produce product that is a cut above mass market receivers. There will probably be no question about power levels and ratings as currently being discussed in another thread. FWIW I use an old analog Accuphase tuner (T101). Frankly, it stomps all over everything out there except for a Macintosh MR78 or one of the better Magnum Dynalab's.

 

[Votrax]

Using the money they would save on removing the tuner wouldn't increase the performance of the receiver. Besides if 98% of people want a receiver with a tuner they're not going to make them without for the few that don't want them. I'm pretty sure he meant separate amp when he said integrated since an A/V receiver has an integrated amp. They just call them A/V pre-amps without an integrated amp. I don't know of any A/V receivers that don't have at least an FM tuner though they may exist.

 

[MrKlister]

Here's the only one I know of, and it ain't cheap.

http://www.sumikoaudio.net/primare/products/spa20.htm

I've heard good things about the Primare seperates, but then again they are pricey.

 

[nm2285]

Integrated amps are much more popular in the stereo realm compared to home theater. Get a receiver with a tuner and just don't use it.

 

[av_phile]

Is the abscence of a tuner the only difference or the A/V receiver has other features that the integrated amp has missing? I guess what I am trying to ask is that, am I loosing any performance or features by chosing an integrated amp vs. a a/v receiver? Where can I start looking for good integrated amps?

You won't lose any performance at all. There's a greater liklihood you'd even get a boost in some aspects of performance. I stand corrected in my earlier post. There's not only very few integrated AV amps out there, there's virtually none. I thought I saw a Musical Fidelity or Krell integrated but they were for stereo 2 channel not AV. What vendors have mostly are multichannel power amps and preamp/processors.

If you don't want those AM/FM tuners, as one poster said it to the point, just don't use them. If you want to opitmize your multichannel set-up, you could invest on those separate preamp/processors and discrete power monoblocks that will cost a lot more than even a flagship AV receiver.

 

[Rob Babcock]

Alternatively, you get get a really nice preamp & amps and spend a lot less than a flagship receiver. The new top of the line Denon, for instance, is about $6,000. There are many pre-amp/amp/monoblock amp rigs you could get for significantly less than that.

It depends on why you want an integrated AV amp. Do you simply feel you could save $ by not having the tuner? If that's the goal, be advised that you'll spend more by trying it. The audio industry will charge you more for less- it's like skim milk. They take the cream out of the milk, yet charge you more for it. At any rate, it boils down to economy of scale. If Sony (for instance) can sell 250,000 units of a particular model, then they can tool up & crank them out cheaply. If they sell 1,500 special models without a tuner, they must spend more money to set up a special assembly line, deal with stocking & distribution, etc. Not to mention it's one more item a retailer will have to distribute. At some point you get to where the "high end" stuff is, where stuff is handmade inefficiently in small numbers, with the cost of lack of efficiency passed on to the end user.

If you are searching for such a device to simplify operation, then perhaps a multichannel preamp would be just the ticket. Something like the Marguiles Daleth or the Adire Vaza might work for you. Add a DVD player with a DTS/DD decoder, along with whatever amps you desire, and you're set. Either preamp would run you about $1200, plus the cost of an amp. You could buy a pretty nice 5 channel amp (Sunfire, ATI, etc) and still be around 1/2 the cost of a top flagship receiver. You'd lose some processing power & flexibility, but you'd still have good sound and simplified operation.

 

[aarond]

Denon makes the AVC series of home theater amps and Yamaha makes the DSP series. Neither one is available in North America

 

[mtrycrafts]

When was the last time you listened to an FM broadcast in a theater? In 5.1? .

In between movies? Waiting for all the guests to arrive or sit down? After the movie? Before listening to CDs? Afterwards?
Any other times?

 

[Unregistered]

Hi-end integrateds were first to the US market

When 5.1 first became available around '96 the best known companies like Yamaha introduced $2500 integrated amplifiers as their statement pieces. Japanese consumers usually get the highest or newest technology products first because the Japanese are rabid "first adopters" of technology. There are few FM stations in Japan so a "serious" statement piece is usually an integrated.

The initial start-up of any completely new technology costs big bucks for any manufacturer and in the case of 5.1 the Japanese manufacturers were tasked to a great extent by having to put 5 channels of Equal amplification per channel into a larger and more costly chassis with a much larger power supply than they had previously used when their receivers catered to 4-channel Dolby Pro-Logic (with lower powered surround channels).

So, in the case of Yamaha the introduction of their DSP-A3090 integrated gave them a unit which they could produce in great quantities, and therefore amortize their initial start-up costs, by producing a single product which could be sold both in Japan and the US.

Note that these initial products were still a new combination of being both software and "hardware" driven. That is, both the volume control and sometimes the mode switcher were potentiometers. These were costly and obviously more prone to mechanical failure. So over the years, as the sales quantities grew rapidly it became the new mantra of cost/efficiency/reliability to build receivers that were more completely software driven because home theater consumers were now more detached than ever from actually touching the receiver's knobs and dials.

In this atmosphere the AM/FM tuner became just another designated button on the remote so the attention to tuner performance has been minimized. And that's not a bad thing by the way. FM tuner performance is usually as good as you get in car and the manufacturers have learned (from lack of consumer complaints, I'd guess) that that performance is good enough.

 

[Monkey Me]

FM tuner performence is really important to me since I refuse to pay for radio,and likes live broadcast.I can't be the only one.

 

[Unregistered]

There is an

older model (1998-2001) Yamaha integrated amp out there. It is called DSP-A1. It's a trully remarkable piece of electronics. Once in a while, you can find some in very good condition going for $600-800 on Ebay.