receiver help

[jjclecky]

Good morning all,MY question I am using a okyo R506 receiver,infinity primus 162 front R+L ,primus 350 center,primus 210 sub and 142 rears.panasonic blueray,samsung 50" plasma,is the receiver I am using enough for the system or should I upgrade it,and if so what 5.1 receivers would you recommend? I only use the 5.1 and will never use 7.1 due to the size of the room and I wont be moving being I just built this house.I am fairly new to learning about home theater but really enjoying it ,I have been upgrading my components little by little and my receiver is the last if the pros think it would make a difference,The big thing is if I do upgrade would I hear a difference in sound quality,I know the new receivers have better decoding but does that equal better sound? thanks in advance for the help and suggestions.

 

[Chopin_Guy]

Welcome to the site jjclecky!!

There are several objective things to look at aside from our upgrade urges that might help you better gear if an upgrade is necessary. Here is a list of some important factors to consider:

1) The size of your room and the levels you like to listen to your movies / music at.

2) The efficiency of your speakers (8, 6, 4 or lower even possible impedence rating on your speakers) -- in your case the Infinity speakers are effecient and should not be all that tricky to power.

3) Features you might want need now or in the future such as room correction, HD-audio format codecs decoding, amount of HDMI switching inputs (2,3,4 or more possible)..and the list goes on.

So these are points to consider....

Remember that underpowering your speakers can be much more dangerous than having too much power. I would say that if you have your own home and your own space that an upgrade from the 506 would definitely be something you will be able to enjoy the benefits of with a higher end AVR....

 

[AVRat]

One of the cons for the 506 is that it only does HDMI passthrough. IOW, the audio from the HDMI connection is not being processed by the receiver. So you're not reaping the full benefit of the Blu-ray audio. Depending on the size of your space, you may benefit from some additional power.

Just to clarify, is this the TX-SR506 or HT-R560? Not that it matters much since I think they're essentially the same.

 

[agarwalro]

Unless you have a very large listening area and therefore need to pump the volume to reach reference levels, the Onkyo should be able to power the Infinitys just fine.

From personal experience, improving electronics can only go so far. What you need to look into is the room's impact on the sound. This impact is so large that the gains are much more apparant (and cost effective) when compared to upgrading speakers and electronics (after a minimal quality has been reached for both and you are well above it).