Need help please; new receiver or new speakers to start with

[Alldutchears]

Hi,

I am new to the forum, but have been struggling with this dilemma for a while, without getting any clear answers. Perhaps you can help out, would much appreciate it!

I have an old Yamaha DSP A2 amplifier (bought back in 2002, it was one of the flagship amps in that time) and connected it to the 5.1 pre-out of a fairly advanced Panasonic Bluray player with internal 32 bit lossless HD sound decoders onboard. In this way, I made the old Yamaha more or less up to date with current HD audio standards.

The Yamaha is hooked up to a mixed speaker system, consisting of HECO front speakers (2-way floorstanding), three KEF Q15 bookshelf speakers (1 serves as center and 2 as surrounds), and a B&W ASW 500 active subwoofer.

Before, when I watched DVDs, I was never really that satisfied with the Yamaha sound in movies, it sounded cold and muddy, although powerful enough. With the current setup, using Blurays and lossless sound decoding via the Bluray player, it is a slight improvement, but I am still longer for richer and more defined sound. One problem with the Bluray player output is that it lacks bass for some reason. When I stream the disc data directly to the Yamaha via the optical output, there is way more bass, but then miss the lossless decoding. Have been unable to figure out why there is less bass via bluray decoding. Talking about bass, I could definitely use a bit more output on the low end as well; it is sufficient, but not excitingly deep.

My living room has a lot of wood in it (wooden floor, wooden cabinets all around) and high ceilings, so I guess acoustics may not be the best.

Nonetheless, the main question is whether I would need to exchange one or more components in my system in order to get the rich and defined sound I hear in some demo studios with modern equipment. Which component would that be, amp, speakers? What would make the biggest impact?

Given my limited budget, I could not buy all at once, have to do step by step. What to do first?

Thanks for the help!

Dirk L

 

[NINaudio]

Speakers will be yuor biggest upgrade to getting better sound. Your front three will be the main ones you want to focus on to get "rich and defined sound". A better subwoofer will help with the low end impact. If you can give us an idea of your budget we can point you in some direction(s).

 

[lovinthehd]

I'd imagine that you're using the external decoder inputs from your bluray player from a glance at the A2 manual. Your bluray players dsp is likely limited at a guess, and you bypass the dsp in the A2 using that input. What specific bluray player is it? How do you have levels/delays set for speakers/sub? IMO if you get more satisfactory audio from the lossy via optical, then use it; you're not missing all that much from the lossless. A modern avr would be able to do the decoding and supply a full suite of dsp choices.

 

[Swerd]

From your description of the problem, different speakers are much more likely to improve the sound. What model HECO speakers do you have? You said they are 2-way floor standing speakers. How big is the woofer? How old is the design?

 

[MrBoat]

I would think speakers too but, before deciding which way to go, have you tried just using the amp stand-alone, with a different source like a CD player, or even a PC? My older amps, which are even older, to way older than yours still sound killer with a CD player or my desktop pc plugged into them with good speakers.

Having come from essentially the same direction you are, in spite of obtaining new speakers, my next logical step was an AVR or amp with pre-outs for a subwoofer and some bass management. And that was with my large floor standers already having adequate bass.

Still, considering I did not have an immediate budget for audio equipment, I could have gotten by rather well with my old amp and my older two speakers if I had sorted it out. Connecting the PC to my old amp was the first major improvement. Turns out the DAC and CD player in my pc was quite capable and my old CD player was having issues which kept me avoiding listening for the most part other than a set of desktop pc speakers and sub.