Since finishing the past 4 part article, two critical pieces of equipment have made their way into the home theater. A new A/V receiver and a Sony PlayStation 3. So yes, it has been a long time since I last posted but its not like I get paid to keep this thing up to date. Without further adieu...
Heart surgery - My Sony receiver suffered a massive attack and went the way of the dodo and joined that giant transistor in the sky. Well that lead me on quite the little adventure: find a budget minded A/V receiver with updated capabilities. After a few hours of online research I finally settled on a new unit and decided the extra bucks were worth it to pick it up at a local brick and mortar store. I had in mind a receiver capable of 7.1 channels and HDMI connections to be able to take advantage of the fact that HDMI combines both HD audio and HD video in a single connector. This was important since the PlayStation 3 I was looking into supported both of those features for its Blu-ray playback abilities. Pretty simple really, find a decent brand with those features and I was set. It came down to a Sony and a Denon, and since my Sony just died I was willing to give the Denon the nod. It was about $250 cool ones and I took it home itching to hook it all up. Well hook it up I did. I hooked up the recently purchased PS3 and my DVD changer via HDMI, which eliminated the secondary audio cables, and cranked up the volume! Soon there was great HD video being projected, but silence remained. I double checked my settings, connections, and source selections, everything seemed right but why wasn't I hearing a dang thing? Ashamed I reverted to my user manuals. All the instructions I had followed were still not resulting in sound. I turned to the back of the manual to the troubleshooting section. There hidden away I found my answer: the unit I purchased supported HDMI video pass-through, no audio would be available through HDMI. Well what in the hump is the point of that!? I really liked the unit otherwise but decided to return it. The second trip back I was prepared to look specifically for HDMI audio support. Turns out as I scanned the spec sheets and asked the in-store 'experts' they really had no clue. I then visited the manufacturer's websites for full specs again to find that this feature was very well hidden in a mud hole of data and numbers. The fact that most 'lower' priced models fail to support audio processing via HDMI is a dirty little secret they like to keep hidden, hoping the average end user is too passive to care. Well the fact remains that optical and coax cables don't support 7.1 channels, only HDMI and 8 separate audio cables are available for 7.1 audio. So lesson learned. The cost? well it took nearly $500 to fulfill my wish list, as time has passed since this episode I am glad to note that prices for these fully capable HDMI units are steadily dropping.
The new unit - Denon AVR-1908 7.1CH A/V receiver. This unit, and its slightly updated brother the AVR-1909, pack a lot of features into fairly reasonably priced packages. They run around $600 at full retail (although you should never have to spend the full amount as a little bit of shopping around will save you some $$$) and are well built. The 1908 uses high quality power supplies and sound processing circuitry. This is not gonna be a full run down of all specs as they would be a lot of dry fun and this is simply a quick overview of the recent upgrades to the theatre. For a full list of what's under the hood, please visit Denon AVR-1908 site. I instantly noticed big differences in the little things in the audio of my favorite movies. The channel separation as well as the balance was a huge improvement over the old Sony. Setup was a fantastic breeze. The unit detected the 6.1 setup as well as includes a mic for detecting each speakers distance, frequency response, volume, and room acoustics. This takes all the guess work out of it, and even after months of listening I still agree with the adjustments the automated setup made.
Not everything is rainbows and penny whistles. The user interface is odd and getting into certain menus and features are confusing, as well as understanding what settings are available and when are not made a whole lot easier even with the help of the user guide. Granted that all slowly becomes easier with time and once the time for tinkering has passed and you get all your preferences locked down its just daily functions like source selecting and volume.
Overall this unit gets high marks and would be a welcome addition in any home theatre on a budget.
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1 comment:
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