A Dialogue on AV Receivers and Features

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admin

Audioholics Robot
Staff member
It doesn't take much to start an argument here at Audioholics. We have some pretty opinionated staff, and even the professionals we interact with will throw in from time to time. Earlier this year we had an internal discussion having to do with this question of trading amplifier quality for features. This time, I discussed making this dialogue public, as it worked out to a rather interesting back and forth that brought to light the issues associated with adding new features to AV receivers while simultaneous dialing back other items in order to maintain price points.


Discuss "A Dialogue on AV Receivers and Features" here. Read the article.
 
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autoboy

Audioholic
All this would be solved if the TVs had a Toslink connection that actually passed 5.1 audio from HDMI and other toslink ports. An average customer would just buy a prepackaged speaker system (like computer speakers today) with a single Toslink input and a built in amp and they would never have to worry about a receiver in their system. Their TV remote would do the video switching like they are used to without the speaker system. Why does a HTiB have a Video component? It is just dumb to duplicate the video switching the TV already does when all the customer really wanted was better than TV speakers.

But no, the TV must be cheap and the $0.50 it would cost for the electronics to switch a DD and DTS signal properly is just too much for them to handle...

The rest of us would continue to buy receivers for their superior sound, HD audio, crossover control, and ability to properly switch component and HDMI video for wall mounted TVs.
 
J

JJMP50

Full Audioholic
I recently help a friend install his entry level system, which is described in another thread, and I spent 3 hours trying to figure out how to get his BR player to pass video via HDMI (cable box worked just fine). Going directly to the TV it worked fine, but using the receiver the video would continue to drop in and out. To make matters worse, I also made a mistake. I gave up on using the receiver and decided to use the coax digital connection. Of course his system was in a very tight place so I had to read the back of the BR player upside down. I wasn't getting any signal from the player via coax. Then I finally figured it out. It didn't have a digital coax out. I was trying to use one of the component video outs (labeled from my upside down view "digital out"). Of course optic worked just fine. It still puzzles me why the HDMI would not work for video but passed audio ok. To the point of this thread his entry level system gave me more headaches that my Yammy/Emotiva set up ever did.
 
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Seth=L

Seth=L

Audioholic Overlord
Personally I favor quality over quantity. A receiver with a robust power supply and quality preamp section coupled to a good amp section capable of driving 4 ohm loads without sagging into oblivion. Features are nice too, and who says we can't have features. Denon is finally figuring this out with the most basic models. Analog connections are becoming sparse and it makes sense when virtually anyone wanting to buy a new home theater receiver has a television with HDMI.

Take a look at the back of this Denon AVR-591.



This is a reasonably sized receiver that focuses on the demands of the consumer in a special way. It offers upconversion and the television will handle the scaling, which they often do better than most receivers costing much more than this unit. It has plenty of other nice features and reasonable build quality for a receiver in this price range. It's not the most robust in terms of amplifier sections, but it's better than most in the sub $400 range. The only thing they could have done better with this model was reduce the height by using a flatter transformer and switching from a folded aluminum heatsink to a shorter extruded aluminum heatsink.
 
jliedeka

jliedeka

Audioholic General
To some extent, we want both - at least certain features and good amplification. I bought a mid range receiver on the belief that I was getting a good amplifier section. So far the Marantz hasn't let me down. I also waited for something with that level of quality to handle audio and video from HDMI.

As much as I appreciate audio quality, convenience is important. I wouldn't settle for an AVR that couldn't take at least LPCM over HDMI and do video switching. I probably could live without Dolby IIx but I like using it.

Jim
 
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templemaners

Senior Audioholic
For low price receivers, I'd rather see less features and higher amplifer quality, since I would imagine that customer just wants to plug it in and go.

For high price receivers, I would want lots of features and flexibility, but would only need a decent amplifier section power wise with high quality preouts. Amplification is pretty affordable with companies like Emotiva and even more so with the pro audio side, so I don't need Onkyo/Denon/Yamaha going nuts with the power.
 
Stereodude

Stereodude

Senior Audioholic
I'd rather see more reasonably priced pre-amps myself. The Integra DHC-40.2 and Marantz AV7005 are a good start.

The low cost receiver market is always going to be a race to the bottom. The company that's willing to shoehorn the most crap into them at the lowest cost possible is going to be dominant. If the amplifiers have to suffer well that's just too bad. :rolleyes:
 
H

hopjohn

Full Audioholic
Tough decisions

I find this debate very intriguing and thought I'd share some of my discoveries when looking for a bang for the buck receiver that included pre-outs this year.

Competing models across receiver brands were as different in room calibration quality, video processing quality, and overall product philosophy as I remember seeing in quite some time.

When looking strictly at products that included a full set of pre-outs a wide gap in product weight (read transformer/amp quality) and features stood out. Frankly, it became quite easy to eliminate some of the possibilities using this criteria.

This year's retail prices are difficult to judge because some brands seem to allow official vendors to discount much more than others. So what may appear as say $700 model, may be more like a $600 model whereas another brand may be a true $700 model since nearly nothing is taken off the retail price.

Bottom line, be more careful than ever when shopping for a receiver.

For those wondering I ended up getting the Pioneer 1120-K. It's amp section is among those that Gene would probably be a little concerned with, but is in fact a step up over the 1020-K's. Pioneer's cost cutting seems to be in amp and chassis design. Pre-outs are more a necessity than ever at the sub $1000 level.
 
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