Upgrade AV Amp or buy Blueray player

[admin_exported]

Advice needed by anybody and whathifi staff visited my local audio excellence/audio T shop today looking to upgrade my av amp (denon avca1) i was thinking along the lines of an onkyo 876 which i have seen for £699 with a 3year guarantee and two free qed hdmi cables and free delivery they seemed to think i may be going sideways rather than upwards with the 876 over the denon avca1 they said i should be looking at the pioneer lx81 @ £1500 or yamaha z7@£2000 which both are more than double the price i was considering spending then they said why not buy the pioneer lx71 blueray player and get hd sound that way with the 6channel outputs on back of blueray fed to my original denon what would be the best way to go an impartional opinion would be much appreciated the lx71blueray is£525 thanks all

 

[d4v3pum4]

Did you not demo either the 876 or the proposed LX71 BD player?

 

[Anonymous]

did not demo either because no stock and no dem models

 

[drummerman]

I can't answer your original question but if you decide on the player consider the BD51. Just as good over HDMI and cheaper.

 

[Anonymous]

any more replies please what i should have added also is i want to upscale standard dvd as well as hd sound

 

[Anonymous]

come on replies needed cat got your tongues what hifi staff and all no pun intended

 

[Anonymous]

andrew everard or anybody out there views on this please

 

[Anonymous]

You really should get out there and demo said models. Is there nowhere else near you? I done demos not so long ago on av-amps and ended up buying a Marantz SR6003 which beat everything for me in it's price range. It's also a well up-to date amp. As said spending the money you are about to do it would be silly not to demo rather than sending for something you have never heard.

 

[Andy Madden]

Hi garrynic, can i just double check does your Denon amp have any HDMI inputs i.e. is it the AVCA1-HD?

ÿtaÿ

 

[Anonymous]

hi andy no my denon does not have hdmi inputs its about 10 years old now but is still a good amp model is avca1 thanks garry

 

[Andy Madden]

Well, there are of a couple of ways you could go:

go for a high-end Blu-ray payer that can decode HD audio onboard and output over multichannel analogue outputs (such as Denon 3800BD, Sony BDP-S5000 or Pioneer BDP-LX91)

or

go for a new system such as the pioneer SC-LX81 and BDP-51FD Blu-ray player.

ÿ

The Denon is still a very good amp so perhaps it's not worth ditching it just yet...

 

[Andrew Everard]

I'd go with Madders' Plan A: stick with your current amp, add on the Sony player, and hook it up to the Denon with four pairs - ie eight channels - of analogue interconnects.

 

[Clare Newsome]

I'd third that - all those high-end BD players are awesome DVD upscalers, too...

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for the advice andy andrew and clare would the pioneer lx 71 be a better option than the 51 as there is only £100 difference in price thanks again garry

 

[drummerman]

Perhaps I add something to it; It's ok to have the best/newest BR player if you have a top display that is capable of showing the increase in picture quality over good mid-price players though I've never seen or heard the mentioned top players so this is purely a guess on my behalf.

There would have to be a phenomenal difference for me to spend over 1k on a player when I can get superb results from a £300 one (BD51).

As I mentioned in another thread I quickly auditioned 3 players amongst which was Denon's transport only model for £600 or so played through a costly Denon AV amp. I thought the Pioneer was just as good but appreciate that there might be a difference but it would have been minute and not worth the extra, at least for my tv set.

If you are happy with your display and AV receiver I'm sure what the editors have suggested is fine but personally I'd say that a ten year old receiver is coming to the end of its useful lifespan and gains can be had by upgrading it, not least for reliability and functionality but sound quality too probably. Manufacturers have apparently made quite some progress with regards to HT receivers musicality if this and other forums and magazine reviews are anything to go by. Having said that I myself am not into multi channel systems and have heard very few which I like with music and those are very expensive.

 

[drummerman]

PS. re.up-scaling, with firmware update 1.17 Pioneers SD up-scaling has, according to calibrators and forum knowledge bases improved drastically from what was already a decent up-scaler. It has been mentioned that it now rivals some expensive standalone scalers.

However, I still use a Tosh XD-E500 for standard DVD's and find the powerful processing if used correctly very appealing. It is available for under a hundred quid now.