Beginner question - high quality stereo home cinema or sound bar?

[maxmelvin19]

Hi there,

I'm a beginner to AV so I wanted some advice.

I have a fixed budget and I want to get a high quality stereo hifi system and a home cinema setup with the large majority of the sound investment palced in the hifi. SO...if I were to get, say, a Lanvardin IS amp, an audiolab M-DAC and either some PMC or Diapason standmounters - could I wire a decent bluray player to the DAC or to the amp and get a decent sound by selecting the 2-channel mix on the blu-ray audio menu?

I definitely don't want a 5 channel surround speaker set up so it would be 2 channel through a very good hifi system or just putting the cinema sound through somehting like a Yamaha sound bar. I don't tend to watch many action movies, more dramas and general world cinema.

I'm not to bothered about hearing sound effects behind me I just want the best sound and tone from blurays.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Max

 

[Dave2860]

i dont know any more but bose does a 3-2-1 set up, which 'repricated' surround sound, expensive but some other company will do something simlar that will be cheaper and proberly better... look a them

 

[John Duncan]

I'd stick with the good stereo rather than the middling soundbar option. Add a bluray player that's good with CDs (eg see my sig) and you're away; you might even do away with the need for a DAC.

 

[Dan Turner]

If suround sound isn't a priority then definitely go for the stereo option. Surround sound is a priority to me, but nevertheless the difference in outright quality is obvious when i switch to stereo - so much so I'm toying with the idea of ditching surround sound.

I have the same BD player as JD and i'd also recommend it and agree that you probably wouldn't need a separate DAC (and if you did it's not worth doing for less than £1k). I've done some comparisons between the 751BD and the DAC built-in to my amp (on Blu-ray music) and there's barely anything in it - I think the player just shaded it for me.

 

[maxmelvin19]

Thanks for the advice.

So is there any problem with putting a 5.1 mix through two speakers? I had a look through the options on a blu-ray recently and there wasn't an option to choose the sound mixed in 2.0 ir 2.1.

Max

 

[John Duncan]

There will be. The stereo outs of a BD player will be just that, and the digital out can be set to PCM.

 

[Dan Turner]

Yes the analogue stereo out will automatically be a stereo mix of whatever soundtrack the player is set to play.