7.1 Upgrade to A85

Hi,
I'm looking for a bit of advice, at the moment I have a A85, a T61 and a CD92 all playing through Mission 782e speakers
I want to get surround sound but without compromising the stereo playback of my system.
Therefore upgrading my A85 to 7.1 and purchasing a 3 channel P90 sounds like a good idea to me. I would also purchase the matching 78 series surround speakers.
Does anybody have any comments of alternative suggestions?.
Also does anybody know how much the 7.1 upgrade costs?

Thanks

Chris

[steeled]

Hi Chris

I have the A90 with the 7.1 input board fitted. If I remember correctly the upgrade costs £350.

If you go for this option then your DVD player will have to do the Dolby Digital and DTS decoding. You will then need a 5.1 analogue connection from the DVD player to the A90 with 7.1.

I use a DV27A for this purpose and it sounds great. The downside to this sort of configuration is that you do not get Dolby Pro Logic decoding for analogue sources like normal TV. Also there is no digital input to connect a games console or sky box. There is no Video switching on the 7.1 module.

Finally you will only get 5.1 surround as I do not know of any DVD players that do the full 7.1 decoding.

An alternative would be to use an AV receiver (AVR300) and use the A85 as a power amp for the Front speakers. (You could also bi-amp with the AVR300 as an other alternative.)

Hope this helps