Changing A/V amp setup

[jiggyjoe]

I currently use a ps3 connected to a yamaha dsp e800 ( £300 in 2000) processor for center and rear effects, and then on to a cambridge audio a500 (£200 in 2000ish) to drive the front left and right.

At the moment I only have the lossy codecs (dolby digital, dts).

my question is: A. will a new £500 Avr ( to decode the new hd formats) sound better than my combo or

B. Buy a bluray player with built in hd decoding and send the signal via multichannel out to my existing kit.? (much cheaper route )

How good is the Audessey room correction kizmo's???

Thanks.

 

[RobGardner]

Personally I would go down the blu-ray player route. My experience of most AV amps is that most of the money goes on the processing power and not the audio. You will get a much improved picture and I expect much better sound quality with the analogue out from a blu-ray player as this feature seems to be available only on higher end models (some cheaper players do have analogue out - but this is only standard audio and not HD audio - my Panasonic BD30 for instance.) . Don't forget to budget for quality analogue cables though as these can be expensive. I would suggest that you buy the same make, model and length for each channel. Finally you will need to get the audio balance set up - if you,ve got a smart phone you can download an ap for not very much money. Hope this helps.