Article Idea

[Sliced Bread]

Just a thought, but on many of the other forums I've read about alot of people (myself included) who have been sking if it is worth upgrading there old AV equipment and if they do, do they need to spend the same amount of money today as they did in the past to get a true upgrade in terms of quality. There are some extreme examples, one that springs to mind is someone who sold an out of date flagship Denon amp and bought an Onkyo 605 based on all the hype, and was obviously disapointed. It seems that with so much talk of features many people are losing sight of the straight out sound quality, and are believing that HD processing is more important than quality amplification. Maybe some articles comparing new and old revceivers across different price points could be interesting.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Thanks for the suggestion - definitely some blog-fodder there!

As ever with upgrading, you've got to consider everything you're after - our reviews will always be first and foremost about performance, but functionality can't be ignored, either. And the way things are going, you won't have to choose between the two - or spend anything near what you once did to get similar if not better levels of performance.

For example, I've only just traded in my beloved Yamaha DSP-Z9 - some £3.3K in its Award-winning 2004 day - for an Onkyo TX-NR905 (£1400): excellent video processing; HD audio handling; HDMI switching and awesome amplification. It's a better option for my set-up, for less money - but I wouldn't have upgraded from the Yamaha if the sound and vision world of HD hadn't been on my system agenda.

Oh, and I have a separate hi-fi set-up, so I don't need my AV receiver to be that musical - again, this isn't the case for everyone, which needs to be factored into the upgrade equation....

 

[Sliced Bread]

Thank you for the response Clare. Improved performance for just over 40% of the price. It would be interesting to find out if that is true throughout the price range? From what you are saying there is definitely going to be an improvement from the newer models, but it would be interesting to know if there is a single rule that can be applied. Hmmm!