Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater New AV Receiever

Thanks for all the responses. I will be looking at more receivers than I thought, although I do have a budget. There will be no flagship receivers or even near that for this 4 children father! You're about on John K, looking in that price range, although I would spend a little more for the right one. We'll see.

I am most intrigued though by Roar's response. I have been out of the game so long, I didn't even know this was an option. You lost me a tad reading your post, but as soon as I get the opportunity, I am going to look into this option while I decide what I want. Thank you. I have plenty of inputs on the Yamaha receiver, so I have plenty of room and time to do some homework.

Besides, I am still basking in my upgrade in television!

Jeff,

Sorry if I rambled

I'm just in a similar situation where I don't want to replace my AVR right now because I'm happy with the sound it produces and it is switching all my audio just fine.

I'm not convinced a low end (<$1000) AVR will do a better job processing my picture then my individual components are doing right now. I suppose if I had a VCR or a Wii in the mix I could benifit somewhat by the AVR upconverting those signals. But for DVD upconversion, the Oppo is going to do just as good of a job as any low end AVR is going to do so if I did buy a cheap AVR I would only be looking to pass the signal straight through and not looking for it do any processing.

Now my display is a projector with a single HDMI port on it, so I needed something to switch my HDMI sources, I opted for a cheap HDMI switch rather then buying a whole new AVR.

I'm not even convinced you need an HDMI switch if your TV has enough HDMI inputs to cover all your components.

I think you should list what components you are looking to connect to your TV and let us know how many HDMI inputs your television has. From there we could determine what benifits you would get by upgrading versus keeping your existing one.

I rambled again, sorry about that

Man, I think I have had some misunderstanding here at what I can accomplish with my current receiver. This is good for me and my pocketbook! Thanks Roar! I have 3 HDMI inputs on my TV.

My connections have been cable into my cable box, then component cables from it and everything else into my receiver, then component cables to TV. All audio has been using coaxial cables into the digital inputs.

Currently, all I want to hook up is my cable box and Blu Ray player. So, all I need do is hook them in directly to the TV via HDMI, skipping the receiver correct? I guess where I am unsure then is how should I run audio...

Thanks again for your advice, I think my wife is breathing easier

Hmmm, this is a turn of events....usually people spend more money when they ask us for advice!

Jeff, you got it, HDMI from cable box into TV for video, then keep the coax/optical from cable box into your AVR, nothing changes for the audio. Then for your Blu Ray, same thing, HDMI for Video, and coax/optical for sound.

You may have to reconfigure your cable box and blu ray player to make sure it thinks it is sending the video to hdmi and the sound to coax/optical, but if I were to guess, I'd bet the devices will figure it out when you put the HDMI in for video and the sound is probably always being sent out of the coax/optical anyway.

There are two rubs to this setup. First, you now need to switch inputs on your tv AND your AVR whenever you want to switch components, this can be done for you with a cheap Harmoney remote if you don't want to change the input with two remotes... and the second one, which perhaps is a bigger concern is the sound quality on blu ray.

The next generation sound, DTS MA and Dolby HD cannot be output over coax/optical, they can only be output over HDMI or analog. So, that is what I was mentioning before, if your blu ray player has analog outs and your AVR has analog in's then you're set! You just stop using the coax/optical for audio on blu ray and switch over to the analog outs, for this you would likely need to configure your blu ray player. If your blu ray player or AVR does not have analog inputs/outputs, then you are stuck listening to plain old Dolby Digital and DTS... which is what you were listening to before you upgraded your tv anyway

Oh just thought of one thing, you may want to go into the settings for your blu ray player and your cable and make do make sure you are not sending sound out over your hdmi... if you didn't you may be getting sound through the tv and through you avr if it did send it out over both and you wouldn't want that... again, me with a projector I don't care if sound gets sent to both my avr and my projector because my projector wouldn't do anything with the sound anyway as it has no speakers

I've done plenty of that already!

But, it feels good to offer something new for you

O.K. now I'm learning something. I wasn't joking when I said that I have been out of the game a long time. I was unaware of the way to send HD audio via analog. This is no prob, as there are indeed analog outs on my cable box and Blu Ray player and plenty of anaolg ins on my current receiver.

Just some menu surfing, searching and changing of settings and all will be good. I owe you a bigtime thank you Roar, for your bigtime help and saving me some bigtime bucks!

I will still enjoy looking for a good deal on a receiver but that will be down the line sometime.

Use the digital out on your cable box, you'll get better quality that way. But indeed, you can have the BD player decode the HD audio internally and output it as analog on the 6 or 8 jacks on the back. You'll have to set your crossover point and speaker distances in your BD player, because the receiver when using the multi-channel, analog input will only be actings as a pre-amp and then passing the unadjusted signals on to its internal amplifier. It's a toss-up whether the receiver will apply individual channel trims though, you'll have to run a test disc through the BD player and check the levels with an SPL meter to find out where you need to do the trims.

Your cable box probably only has 2 channel analog out, you will want to stick with the digital connection there. Your blu ray player hopefully has 5.1 or 6.1 analog out and your AVR hopefully has the same, that is the ones you want for your blu ray. I'd be stunned if your cable box has 5.1 analog outs and equally stunned if your AVR has more then one set of multi-channel analog inputs

There are just too many upgrades to make in the theatre before I commit some more cash to a new AVR... and personally, when I make that move I want to go with seperates... seeing the brand new Anthem in EFalardeau thread in this forum has me needing to save a little longer