Is quality of Blu Ray player as important as AVR quality?

keysersoze123 · 17-11-2009, 2:43 PM

Hi there,

In HiFi most people spend as much on their source (CD player, turntable etc) as they do on their amp.

In home cinema, i.e. multi channel, it seems a lot of people talk about AVRs, but not so much about their Blu-Ray players and stuff.

Does the AVR basically take care of sound quality?

Just wondering if if home cinema is slightly different, in that the AVR is more important than the quality of the Blu-Ray player you feed into it. Plenty of people seem to feed cheap Xboxes and Sky boxes and PS3s into high end AVRs...

So, if you're spending serious cash £1k plus on an AVR, do you really need to be looking at buying a high end Blu-Ray player as well?

The thing is Blu-Ray players are as much about video quality as sound quality, but would I be foolish to buy an expensive AVR (I'm looking at the Yamaha Z7), an expensive set of speakers, and then just feed it with a PS3 Blu-Ray player...?

Do most people with AVRs have high quality 'audiophile' style Blu-Ray players to boot? Does this make a big difference to overall sound quality?

It's just if I get an AVR and speakers, a lot of the content I listen to will be broadcast TV, which is hardly a high end source, but for Blu-Ray films, will I get much improved audio from higher end players?

Thanks,

Keyser

Pecker · 17-11-2009, 3:21 PM

There are all sorts of reasons why this is different to hi-fi.

Firstly, if you're bitstreaming audio, most (if not all) the SQ will be dominated by your amp and speakers, rather than your player (think of an A/V amp as a DAC and amp together).

Secondly, 1080p/24 video reproduction is near-identical for all BD players.

Thirdly, hi-fi involves 2 channels of amplification and speakers, whilst A/V involves 5, 6 or 7 channeals of amplification and the same number of speakers + a sub-woofer.

Steve W

Welwynnick · 17-11-2009, 4:04 PM

Just a slight qualification to that. If you really are bitstreaming, then yes, a cheap player will perform well. However:

if you are using your BD player to play CDs, or:
if you're using a player like the original PS3 that outputs digital audio by LPCM, or:
if you are using analogue connections,

then a better and more expensive player can perfrom better. Otherwise not too much to worry about!

Nick