I want to beef up my AV - Would these help?

[chris watton]

I have a Pioneer AV receiver right now (which has SKY, BR, PS4, PS3, HTPC and record deck attached), with a 5.1 speaker system. The receiver is on its way out, it keep overheating and turning itself off, so I was thinking about getting this:

https://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/...

And these, to help beef up the sound, especially for my vinyl record deck:

https://www.richersounds.com/product/floorstanders...

I already replaced the sub for something more substantial (a Tannoy), which helps. Would the above items be a good investment?

Cheers

[davek_964]

I'm thinking of upgrading my AV amp too, and from a feature point of view that Denon looks like an absolute bargain. In fact, although I was planning on a 6200 a hi-fi specialist told me today that I could probably buy something with less amplification because I use the pre-outs to my main hi-fi amps for the front left / right.
That caused me to do some research today and I almost went to buy a 2200 until I realised the pre-outs are only for Zone 2 and won't take input from HDMI. Which makes them fairly useless for me.
If it wasn't for that, I think I would have gone for the 2200 myself. Denon seems to have far more decoding options than other manufacturers for similar cost, at least from the research I've done. I haven't found anything that tempts me more than the 6200 for the same money.

[chris watton]

Cheers

I went to Cheltenham today to pick up the Denon receiver, and a pair of Tannoy Eclipse Three speakers:

http://www.richersounds.com/product/floorstanders/...

Instead of the MERCURY V4i floor standers. was £100 more for the Eclipse speakers, but they sounded great in the showroom, so had to have them instead.

Just got to set it all up now..

[Patch1875]

Been looking at this amp myself as well as the similarly priced Yamaha's.

Let us know the verdict.

[anonymous-user]

Those Tannoy's look a good buy. I've got an ancient set of smaller Tannoy speakers (20 years old) and they still sound superb - I'd be interested in your view once you've listened to those new ones.

[chris watton]

OK, all set up. The Denon receiver was a lot easier to set up (with a much less complicated remote) than the Pioneer VSX-920-K it replaced. It has a smaller footprint but is taller by about an inch.

It took a while to find the option to have the sub-woofer on all the time (wasn't working when I played vinyl), but once I found my bearings navigating the options, it's quite easy to allocate each separate unit for sound. The SKY HD box doesn't seem to allow full digital sound if I just plug the HDMI into the receiver, so I had to plug that into the TV and use an optical cable for the receiver to get the surround sound - fine with PS3/4 with a single HDMI, but not the SKY HD box.

The speakers pack quite a punch and the difference to the two fronts they replaced is 100% noticeable, they sound great whatever the volume - very clear with zero distortion, even at near-full volume.

In short, very happy with purchase, and more than good enough for what we use it for.

[maccas99]

Glad you like the new receiver. I've been running one of these since January this year and it's great. I'm running a Sky box (in Freesat mode), Roku3 and a Sony Blu-Ray Player all hooked up to an old Panny 1080p plasma with the Kef T201 5.1. Everything works great but the TV is just out of place now and it won't break!! :-)

[Gio G]

Purchased the same amp over 1.5 year ago. Still very happy with it, lovely piece of kit for the money!

G

[chris watton]

Ok, had this set up for just over a month now, and love the new hi-fi speakers that replaced the smaller fronts. So much so that I seem to have doubled my vinyl LP collection in the space of a month, they sound so good!

When watching TV and movies, I have the AV receiver in 'Movie Mode'

When I first tried it with vinyl, I left it in Movie Mode, and the volume was restricted. However, when I used 'Pure' mode, all of that changed. What a difference! I tried to increase the volume as loud as it would go, but it was simply too much, even for our large double-size lounge. What impressed me the most was the fact that the sound had zero distortion at very high (near ear-splitting) volume, very punchy with plenty of clarity (at least, that what is sounded like to me).

For the first time, I can now easily distinguish the difference in sound quality between my huge MP3 library and vinyl - it really is like night and day. Am yet to try CD's, but so far, am very happy with this set up - so glad our house is a detached!

[legzr1]

On your Sky HD box select settings from the top menu, down to sound tab , digital audio output -HDMI select DOLBY D rather than NORMAL.

This should give you DD over HDMI

[chris watton]

legzr1 said:

On your Sky HD box select settings from the top menu, down to sound tab , digital audio output -HDMI select DOLBY D rather than NORMAL.

This should give you DD over HDMI

Thanks for that, will check that out later!

[JimbobVFR]

And if you do have an older box that doesn't do HD over HDMI you can assign the audio to be taken from optical rather than HDMI so you can still use the ampnto switch sources.