Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners can't make up my mind

I hate making decisions like these. I have owned more than a few pioneer products from bestbuy/future shop. I know they sounded sub par but most often you got what you paid for. The later ones were getting ok as if you’d wait for them to be replaced by newer models then the $1200-1600 models would come down to the $450-600 price levels that sort of to me showed how much markup was in the units and what they likely should have been selling for.

But I have never owned a Pioneer Elite form another store line. I imagine that Best Buy get a specific design for them that don’t line up with everyone else. Who knows if they get a high margin lower quality made knowing they are big enough that people will just buy from them??

Do I put my distrust in getting crap to one side and say perhaps it will be an ok unit??

You can pay an ever upgrade cost for electronics especially stereo equipment. Is it better than the one before it?? Does an Arcam FMJ really give better sound than a NAD bee to justify the $600-1000 price difference. I don’t know

And if I put just about any major brand into google and search for <brand.name> failure rate, you will get pages upon pages from forum users saying it was a piece of junk and never buy that brand. It’s a wonder that any company is still in business.

What is the answer?

Check these guys out:

https://www.partsconnexion.com/

They have a lot of deals on various integrated amps, and are located in Burlington, Ontario.

I was ther earlier today Craig. They do sell quite a load of really nice stuff at ell sorts of price ranges, but where I am paralyzed is how much (or little) do you need to get something that will sound good. Sure I could go in there and drop $1000 and be pretty sure that what I get will be pretty darn good, but what if I bought the cheapest option for $300.. will I be satisfied? Do I need to get a $500 or $600 intergrated?

I could get them to plug one in with their speakers as mine haven’t arrived yet and listen.. but what will I learn. Did something that sounds good there mean it will here?

This Arcam receiver is killer - it may be overkill with 7 x 80 WPC - as you are looking for 2 channel. BUT - it's tremendous as a 2 channel amp, and the power supply will be entirely dedicated to your 2 speakers. It's listed at $299 US on their site:

https://www.partsconnexion.com/TRADEIN-86347.html

I was thinking of if a good quality AV receiver would do just as good a job considering there are sometimes loads of those for sale rather cheap.

I did download the manual for that Arcam Diva and it's interesting that on page 30 of the manual it covers both by-wire and by-amping the speakers. Now I know I ordered the M3 with bi-wire posts, so it is possible. That way I would be getting effectively 2x80watts per speaker using more of what the unit has, rather than running a single channel and getting 100watts of power. Perhaps that will give me more dynamic headroom.

Tech Radar did a review - with tests - of the unit. Here is what they measured:

""In our lab, the model delivered 105W across five channels, and 130W in stereo mode (into 8ohms). Multichannel mixes are simply laid bare in the room and the sound all but leaps out of the speakers, creating the wonderful illusion of a much larger listening environment.""

This means you are going to have 4x105 watts for the M3's - that's going to rock. And Arcam's stuff is just plain great sounding.

Why, according to Arcam, is HDMI bad for audio?

Well, I placed an order for the unit. They are closed untilL Thursday so I hope that they process me first. Well, I can drive to the office for 10am when they open so hopefully all will be good.

Another crisis averted

Matt - I just checked. It is off the website, so it is likely you got the unit.

You need to look at the era for this unit. This is an HDMI 1.0 spec. So by comparison to what was capable over coax, yes this method via HDMI was far inferior to what you'd get with other digital connectors. it wasn't until HDMI 1.3 came out that there was enough bandwidth to offer the higher bit count modes. You must remember that the early spec was very locked down in it had to format the signal to a specific spec and even if it was just sending audio, a blank video package was also being encoded.