What does a AV Receiver do?

[nayenshah]

My dilema has been trying to establish as to what an AV receiver/ home cinema receiver does.

Do the normal speaker cables simply fit into the back of the reciever?

Can i connect, VHS, DVD, TV and satellite TV's to a receiver so that you can get 5.1 surround sound from all of them?

 

[avaserfi]

A receiver does tons of stuff the simple answer is that it acts as an amplifier and a pre-pro in one. This means the amplifier portion powers the speakers (so you do connect the speaker wire to the receiver) and when acting as a pre-pro you can connect all your sources and display if it is an audio video receiver (vhs, dvd, tv etc...) and if the reciever has the proper encoding processes, which most do, it will take two channel sources and matrix them out to 5 or 7 otherwise it will take the 5 channel signal and just send it to the speakers.

Think of the receiver as the brains of your home theater.

 

[nayenshah]

thank you very much, what is pre-pro?

can blu-ray DVD players be connected to receivers?

what is the most important thing to remember when buying speakers? RMS output or anything else? same q. for sub-woofers?

 

[rnatalli]

A receiver is basically a tuner, preamp, and amplifier all in one box. Like Avaserfi said, it's the brains of your HT. To answer your question, yes, you would hook up your speaker cables to the back of a receiver and ideally hook all your sources (VHS, DVD, CD, Cable, etc...) to it as well. Whether you will get 5.1 will depend on the source. So a DVD will usually feed a 5.1 signal, but VHS will not in which case the receiver will use Pro-Logic or something simpler. Hope this helps.

Prepro is your processing center. This is where a signal from your source is processed into Dolby, Stereo or whatever.

When buying speakers, auditioning is the top thing to remember. Bring some of your own CD's and a notepad. Take your time as speakers are the most critical part of an HT. Audition well-known brands and choose what you like best. Once speakers are out of the way, then worry about a receiver capable of driving those speakers. Don't worry about technical specs as they're not always reliable. Trust your ears.

 

[avaserfi]

thank you very much, what is pre-pro?

can blu-ray DVD players be connected to receivers?

what is the most important thing to remember when buying speakers? RMS output or anything else? same q. for sub-woofers?

pre-pro does all the processing without powering.

If you have a receiver with HDMI switching (which does audio and video) you can take full advantage of high def players.

When buying speakers sound quality is the most important thing, not specs. Go out and listen to as many as you can then decide what you like. Pick your speakers then your receiver with about half the budget going towards speakers. For a sub in a HT application you want something that can go low, well, I would recommend looking at HSU and SVS subs in that regard.

If you post a budget and what you want from the system and what you will use it for (ie how much music/movies you will be listening too) people can help you out with options on what to check out.

 

[Alamar]

My dilema has been trying to establish as to what an AV receiver/ home cinema receiver does.

Do the normal speaker cables simply fit into the back of the reciever?

Can i connect, VHS, DVD, TV and satellite TV's to a receiver so that you can get 5.1 surround sound from all of them?

"Normal speaker cables" do fit into the back of the receiver and is used [duh] to connect the receiver to your speakers.

Your VHS won't support 5.1 audio. You only get 5.1 [or better] from DVD / BluRay / XBox or similar items.

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For receivers I suggest that you look over what "rnatalli" indicated.

To summarize the receiver is the heart of your AV system. A good receiver for you will allow you to plug in the video & audio outputs from everything that you want to watch into it ... DVD / BluRay / XBox / VHS / etc. should all be able to connect to the receiver at the same time. These are your "sources".

NOTE: You want to use the best quality source available to you ... HDMI, Component, SVideo, and finally Composite are generally the best video connection types [in order]. Audio wise HDMI, optical, or digital coax are all fine .... only use RCA if the signal is 2.0 (like a VHS player) ... you really want to use one of the other types of "audio out" if possible.

The "outputs" of the receiver run to your speakers and your TV. The receiver will power your speakers and tell them what to play.

My advice for shopping for a receiver is to make it your last purchase [not counting cables]. This way you'll know what you need to connect, how many connectors, and what sort of speakers that you need to drive from the unit.

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As far as speakers I have to agree with "avaserfi". For an in-store listening test take your own CDs and/or Movies to listen to. The listening material that you take should stress the speakers on high, mids, and low-mids. Make sure that your listening material has a lot of detail in it and then listen for those details to see if the speakers reproduce it well.

If you can arrange an in-home demo as a last step then that's great [you'll need an appropriate receiver first] because speakers likely will sound different in-store vs. in-home.

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If you post a budget and let us know what you want to do then we'll give you the best advice that we can.

 

[rnatalli]

I've posted some thoughts in the other thread here:

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36487