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No doubt this has been done before, so apologies if it has…
Have for many years been playing tv (and dvd, wii etc) through stereo amp and speakers. Which is nice - my amp is good (Unison Simply 2) as are the speakers (big 3-way floor standers which I built myself).
Now. If I were to take the plunge and replace my hi fi amp with a modern AV job, and play everything through that (including additional speakers, which I already have but are not in place or in use yet) - would I feel let down in term of sound quality?
I particularly don't care for harsh/hard-work sound - my valve amp is low powered but lovely and smooth. I never listen to anything very loud, btw - semi detached house and kids in bed upstairs of an evening.
What do you reckon? Onkyo seem to have a good reputation for audio sound?
Any of these would be a good bet:
http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/25/grouptest_av_receivers_intro/
They will alway be a compromise for a decent stereo amp though, i have an ageing Sony STR-DB940 and KEF KHT 5.1 speakers, music sounds OK but nowhere near as good as a dedicated amp and a couple of nice mission nice.
Yamaha FTW!
Whats your budget
My friend just bought a yamaha, I wanst impressed by the sound.
Another has a Sony, apparently they aren't regarded as great but sounded fine to me.
I've just bought an Onkyo, but haven't been able to listen to it yet as it was diverted to my parents not to my house as my card was being investigated for fraud (any my parents was still the billing address) 🙁
I think that a modern AV amp is going to sound quite harsh in comparison to your existing valve amp.
Also, given that your current amp is low power, aren't your speakers going to be very sensitive ones and therefore not well matched to a modern AV amp?
Budget is def an issue - I guess very much the friendly side of £500, preferably in the 300 to 400 range. Considering that my Unison amp is now well over £1500 (and was 1100 when I got it about 12 years ago) I guess I may be asking a hell of a lot - but I do recognise the diminishing returns thing too.
I have considered an ebay Yamaha E800, which adds additional channels and lets you keep you stereo amp - anyone got experience of that?
Speakers are reasonably efficient, but not outrageously so. When I got the amp I did have it running some normal Mission bookshelf 2-ways for a while - even though it only runs to 12 watts it really didn't notice most of the time at modest volumes. It is surprising how few watts one is actually listening to in real life.
OP don't apologise as it appears to be Hi Fi Thursday today.
Yamaha is a 'warm' sounding Amp compared to some. I reckon you won't go far wrong with it. Listening to someone else's isn't necessarily a fair comparison, they'll have different sources and different speakers.
OK, so I went ahead and did it anyway. Got an Onkyo 605 off ebay for £135, and a Sony 570 Bluray player. And - it isn't bad at all. In fact, I quite like it in regular stereo. Obviously it isn't the lovely thing that my old stereo set up was - but it is by no means unlistenable.
Plus I now have very effective and enjoyable surround sound.
Plus I now have a rather excellent CD player and valve amp going spare to (one day, when I get round to it) rig up a system for the office.
try (whilst you have it spare) plugging the old CD player into the new amp. You may find the DAC in the CD player more to your tastes than that in the amp..
H
Good thought - I should do a back-to-back.
Glad you find it ok, but before I read down the page and noticed you'd taken the plunge, I was going to chip in with Onkyo's not being the best for music, but good for AV.
However, if you're happy then that's all the proof you need.