Which amp?

[admin_exported]

Hi folks,

I know this gets asked a lot, but I'm new to the AV scene and I'm sure I'm missing something. I have a shiny new Panny 42PZ85 on the wall and I need to replace the hissing PT460 with a surround sound system that will sound as good as the tv looks. From reading numerous articles/reviews/posts it would appear that there are three main contenders:

Yamaha AX763

2 HDMI, no video upscaling, HD sound, no radio tuner.

Onkyo SR606

4 HDMI, 1080i upscaling, HD sound, radio tuner

Denon 1909

3 HDMI, 1080p upscaling, HD sound, radio tuner.

I don't have an HD games console at the moment, but never say never, and so with cable tv and a DVD player already the Yamaha's 2 inputs is looking rather mean. The Denon's addition of 1080p upscaling over the Onkyo's 1080i upscaling would suggest that of these three units, in terms of desirablility it is Denon first, Onkyo second, Yamaha third.

Am I understanding this correctly? Does that conclusion tally up with conventional wisdom on the subject? I ask, because all three are a similar sort of price and I think all three received five star reviews.

I would appreciate anyone's comments on this.

Cheers!

 

[Anonymous]

It depends what is more important to you really, the sound quality and the specs. I had a demo with the denon 2309 and the yamaha 763 and i would have said that the yamaha was much better. And that denon is the next model up from the 1909

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Yes, but when it comes to 'sound quality' it is up to the individual's perception of what is good that counts. In other words, I may hate the denon for sound performance, when you clearly love it.

I have the onkyo 606 and love to way it sounds. The denon came out after I bought the Onkyo, which cost me only £360. If I had seen the denon, I may have bought it too, just because I take freeview through the amp to upscale it, and 1080p is better than the 720p I use now. (Although, a lot of the signals transmitted are shocking, anyway!!)

Therefore, my advise to you, Vormulac, is to go and try listen to them all in one shop. Then you can make a decision in terms of sound quality, as well as weigh up the spec advantages too.

But according to 'What Hifi', the denon has a 'greater body and richer tonality' compared to the onkyo and therefore makes a better amp, assuming you use it for stereo playback too.

Hope that helps...........

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks chaps, I really appreciate your advice. I think I might be able to swing by a Richer Sounds on the way home and see what they have got set up.

Pistol Pete, does 1080p make a significant difference over 1080i? You say had the Denon been around you might have bought it *too*, would you however have bought it *instead*. I guess that's the real question, ignoring for the moment the sound characteristics which I will only be able to judge (as you say) on hearing them for myself, the Denon appears to have the edge on the functionality front assuming the upscaling to 1080p is a genuine improvement over 1080i, otherwise the Onkyo would appear to be a realistic (and slightly cheaper) alternative.

Again, thanks ever so much for you input, it's really helpful to hear from people who have experience of these systems.

V.

 

[Anonymous]

I was in the market for an amp this year and finally bought the 1909 in September from RS. Overall, I've been very pleased with it but whether that's down to the speakers (Tannoy Arena) or the amp itself is very hard to call. The amp itself runs very cool and was easy enough to set up. It looks decent enough (it's a big black box with knobs on, no master design but then again not unattractive) Seeing as I don't have another amp to compare it to, then all I can say is the sound is very enjoyable on games, films and music. When trying to choose which amp to buy I found it near impossible to get anyone to actually set up my choice of amp with speakers. The standard response I seem to read on forums etc is to go and have a demo and decide for yourself but that proved to be a major hitch in my decision making process. In the end, I just had to go with my gut feeling and hope I wouldn't be disappointed. I guess my point is, you'll have to make a decision some time otherwise you'll go crazy reading everyone's opionions as everyone will have their take on why they think their choice is the best. Most audio shops are reluctant to provide you with a true comparison as it takes them ages to set it all up, so in the end you just go round and round in circles going slowly but surely mad. My advice would be that all the amps you've referred to are decent and will do the job you want, decide what functions you want and go for it. The sooner you get your kit the sooner you'll be enjoying it. Watching films at home is now a real pleasure and makes such a difference to the experience that I've stopped thinking about whether I made the right choice. I'm happy and that's as good as you can hope for. Hope I've been of help, it's quite stressful choosing the right kit (but exciting at the same time) so I wish you well.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Vormulac:
Hi folks,

I know this gets asked a lot, but I'm new to the AV scene and I'm sure I'm missing something. I have a shiny new Panny 42PZ85 on the wall and I need to replace the hissing PT460 with a surround sound system that will sound as good as the tv looks. From reading numerous articles/reviews/posts it would appear that there are three main contenders:

Yamaha AX763

2 HDMI, no video upscaling, HD sound, no radio tuner.

Onkyo SR606

4 HDMI, 1080i upscaling, HD sound, radio tuner

Denon 1909

3 HDMI, 1080p upscaling, HD sound, radio tuner.

I don't have an HD games console at the moment, but never say never, and so with cable tv and a DVD player already the Yamaha's 2 inputs is looking rather mean. The Denon's addition of 1080p upscaling over the Onkyo's 1080i upscaling would suggest that of these three units, in terms of desirablility it is Denon first, Onkyo second, Yamaha third.

Am I understanding this correctly? Does that conclusion tally up with conventional wisdom on the subject? I ask, because all three are a similar sort of price and I think all three received five star reviews.

I would appreciate anyone's comments on this.

Cheers!

For this price range, I don't think you would beat the Sony 2400es for sound, GUI, ease of set up or spec. It upscales and upconverts analogue to 1080p, 4 hdmi, all HD audio codes, has a tuner, GUI, and looks decent too. Sony has also shrunk them down in size.

 

[Pistol Pete1]

Yes Vormulac, I meant 'instead' rather than 'too'.

The difference in 1080p and 1080i will be definitely noticable. 1080i only puts half the amount of lines (info) on the screen at one time, then the next half appears. It does this so quickly your eyes do not notice, but sometimes the screen does not line up perfectly.

1080p puts all 1080 lines on screen at same time, so will clearly be the improved picture.

Gerrardasnails has a valid point when he suggests the sony 2400es as an option. Not sure on its price, but its meant to be a good amp.

Hope that helps......

 

[Anonymous]

Oh God, these amps are all so very shiny. I'm getting slightly afraid of the sort of money I'm getting in to here though - the system I'm looking to replace (the Panasonic PT460) was £150 for the amp and speakers and that had an upscaling DVD player built in!

Thanks to all of you for your advice, I think I'm going to have to take a long, hard look at my budget and see what I can do based on that.

Cheers all!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Vormulac:
Oh God, these amps are all so very shiny. I'm getting slightly afraid of the sort of money I'm getting in to here though - the system I'm looking to replace (the Panasonic PT460) was £150 for the amp and speakers and that had an upscaling DVD player built in!

Thanks to all of you for your advice, I think I'm going to have to take a long, hard look at my budget and see what I can do based on that.

Cheers all!

What will you be connecting to the receiver? Be aware that none of the receivers mentioned (there are not many if any under £1k) upscale hdmi. You will only get upscaling from analogue connections.

If you are worried about the cost of all this, the Sony STRDG820 could be the one for you. They are available at around £250. So if you are only going to connect with hdmi, you won't need upconversion or upscaling...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001EWE98C/800002371-21/?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

 

[SpiceWeasel]

Another option is to do what I did and buy your equipment in stages. I bought the Denon 2105 5.1 amp and the front left/right mission M33i speakers and then used the centre and rear speakers from my old pro logic tv. Then when I saved up some more cash I bought the matching Mission centre and eventually the matching rears.

It's not ideal but it at least I could enjoy proper surround sound until I could afford the rest of the speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

The inputs will be at the moment a Pioneer PVR (no hdmi, so RGB I expect), a standard cable box (again, no hdmi so presumably RGB) and a Wii (yup, RGB again). However, in the relatively near future that cable box will be replaced with an HD box (so hdmi) and a new disk spinner, probably a BD35 (hdmi). The pvr and Wii will remain connected too. I know that's only two hdmi inputs, but hitting the limit straight away is one of the things that's concerning me about the Yamaha 763, if I do get an HD console I'm immediately scuppered.

Thanks for the mention of that Sony, Gerradasnails, it certainly looks good (shame about the lack of upscaling as you can see from above I will have at least two analogue inputs for the foreseeable future). Can someone explain this passage from the review though?

"However, there is one notable omission: multichannel analogue inputs. So, your player has to be able to stream the HD data through HDMI for everything to work properly. In addition - not that you'd really expect them at this price - there are no pre-outs."

I thought one of the main points with hdmi was that it connected both the sound and video in one cable, I gather from this excerpt that this is not always the case. And it seems to suggest that unless your source can bundle the HD sound in with the hdmi video you won't get HD sound from the amp - isn't this what the digital optical inputs are for? Actually, that's a point, I thought HD was the main selling point of a modern 'digital' source, why would a multichannel 'analogue' input have any bearing on that?

This is getting very confusing!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Vormulac:
The inputs will be at the moment a Pioneer PVR (no hdmi, so RGB I expect), a standard cable box (again, no hdmi so presumably RGB) and a Wii (yup, RGB again). However, in the relatively near future that cable box will be replaced with an HD box (so hdmi) and a new disk spinner, probably a BD35 (hdmi). The pvr and Wii will remain connected too. I know that's only two hdmi inputs, but hitting the limit straight away is one of the things that's concerning me about the Yamaha 763, if I do get an HD console I'm immediately scuppered.

Thanks for the mention of that Sony, Gerradasnails, it certainly looks good (shame about the lack of upscaling as you can see from above I will have at least two analogue inputs for the foreseeable future). Can someone explain this passage from the review though?

"However, there is one notable omission: multichannel analogue inputs. So, your player has to be able to stream the HD data through HDMI for everything to work properly. In addition - not that you'd really expect them at this price - there are no pre-outs."

I thought one of the main points with hdmi was that it connected both the sound and video in one cable, I gather from this excerpt that this is not always the case. And it seems to suggest that unless your source can bundle the HD sound in with the hdmi video you won't get HD sound from the amp - isn't this what the digital optical inputs are for? Actually, that's a point, I thought HD was the main selling point of a modern 'digital' source, why would a multichannel 'analogue' input have any bearing on that?

This is getting very confusing!

Multi channel analogue is handy for the older receivers that don't decode HD audio. This was you send the soundtrack to the BD player via the 5.1 cables and the BD player decodes it. If your new receiver decodes HD audio, you don't need to worry about the BD player having multi channel inputs.

Given all your boxes you want to connect I would definitely go for the 2400es. This has pre outs, upscales, upconverts, 4 hdmi, and is so easy to use. You would use hdmi from receiver to screen and then S video or component if available for your current boxes to the receiver and it will upconvert to work with the hdmi connection to the screen and upscale to 1080p. When you change to hdmi boxes, you will just need to plug them into the receiver with hdmi cables.

The only component that doesn't carry digital audio through hdmi is the Sky HD box. All the other stuff you buy that connect with hdmi will give you audio as well as picture through the one cable.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks again Gerrardasnails, that Sony is sounding pretty tempting, I winced at the price, but there are quite a few deals on it at the moment. It doesn't sound like there is much it doesn't do! I need to factor in a set of speakers too, they won't be anything stunning to start with, probably the Jamo A102HCS5 set.

 

[Anonymous]

Right, Sony amp and Jamo speakers duly ordered. I'll let you know how I get on with it.

My thanks to all of you for your help and advice, you've made a decision I've been agonising over considerably easier (if not any cheaper!

LOL)

Cheers all!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Vormulac:
Right, Sony amp and Jamo speakers duly ordered. I'll let you know how I get on with it.

My thanks to all of you for your help and advice, you've made a decision I've been agonising over considerably easier (if not any cheaper!

LOL)

Cheers all!

You will be ok once you set it up and you hear it for the first time!