Advice Best sounding HD amp...

[Chewy]

Hi all,

Despite being a long time 'lurker' on this forum and even longer time subscriber to the mag, this is my first forum post.

I'm looking for a straight simple recommendation, from anyone who cares to post a reply, for a new home cinema reciever to replace my Onkyo 905. All I am interested in is the best possible multi-channel sound quality with the ability to decode the latest HD sound formats. All other bells and whistles, network connectivity, upscaling chips, or indeed any other connection type beyond HDMI are surplus to requirements. As I use a seperate Lumagen scaler, all the reciever will 'recieve' is the bitstream signals over that connection.

My budget is £5k absolute maximum. Value-for-money or bang-for-buck recommendations are not necessary, just the best possible sounding reciever (or processor and amp if any exist in the range) within that budget.

Cheers

Gareth

 

[Chewy]

Anyone??

 

[Anonymous]

Have you heard ARCAM's latest multichannel receivers? They are very concerned about hi-fi sound and musicality (is that a word?). Give them a listen - AVR 2500 and 3500. All I have is the AVR300, but it is good and clean. Am saving up ! When I have a convincing dollop of cash ready I'll audition them.

Ernie

 

[professorhat]

Assume you've looked here?

 

[Anonymous]

£5k will buy you two of the best av receivers known to man. The pioneer sc-lx90 or the Yamaha dsp-z11 (which a quick google search will reveal can now be had for about £3700, and for the dosh is the one i would go for if i was changing my amp now).

You will need speakers to do it justice mind.

By the way how much of a difference does your lumagen processor make? The guy who calibrated my telly swore by them. I was very interested but they arent exactly cheap.

 

[aliEnRIK]

If youd be interested in a 'pre' and 'power' combo then id recommend the Marantz av8003 pre amp

For power a lot of people swear by the NAD. Personally I bought the Arcam P1000 as I got it for a third of the original price, and even though WHF gave it 3 starts I can tell you its a powerhouse and very musical to boot

Of course youd need some spare cash for all the connecting cables

 

[Anonymous]

Really good budget you have, Gareth, which is fantastic because there are several good options.

Since you specified "Receiver", I would suggest to audition these units (I say "audition" because when you are spending such a big amount of money, you will really have to listen for yourself):

Pioneer SC-LX90 'Susano' 10-channel A/V Network Receiver

Yamaha DSP-Z11 11-channel A/V Receiver

Denon AVC-A1HDA 7-channel A/V Receiver

Otherwise, if you would not mind a Pre-amp/Processor and Power Amplifier combination, it would be worth checking these out:

Rotel RSP-1570 Pre-amp/Processor plus Rotel RMB-1575 5-channel Power Amplifier (and you can add an additional Power Amplifier if you need more than 5 channels of amplification)

Marantz AV8003 Pre-amp/Processor plus Marantz MM8003 8-channel Power Amplifier - just a personal viewpoint of mine - I have been extremely happy with my AV8003 but I did not purchase the 'matching' MM8003 Power Amplifier because I personally was not very impressed with it. I am extremely happy with my NAD M25 7-channel Power Amplifier

Dan.

 

[TheHomeCinemaCentre]

The quality of sound will be influenced by your speakers and certain products will work better than others.

Keeping it very general my one box choice would be the Pioneer SC-LX90 - it will drive everything very well amd will match with the majority of speakers . It has good high quality room eq to polish up the sound even further. Multi-ch sound is superb with excellent placement of effects all round the room without the front/back feel of the Onkyo.

As a two box alternative the MM8003/AV8003 from Marantz can sound superb when mathced with the correct speakers. 2ch performance is brilliant and in 5.1 the extra three channels in the power amp can be used to bi-amp the front three speakers.

An audtion is a wise move but if you are buying blind the Pioneer will work with more speaker and room options.