Ideal reciever blu-ray combo with Mac mini

[deant22]

Hi,

This is just my second post, just getting into the higher end stuff & appreciate the words of experience.
I was looking open question would be if you have 2,500 pounds to spend on a receiver and a blu-ray player what would you buy? - this will all be hooked up to a Sony bravia, i keep my music on a mac mini (this has no HDMI output) with a 1 terabyte separate hard-drive (also keep TV shows etc on this), ideal i would feed this into the reciever. MY speakers are the XT series from B&W (only ones the wife would allow in the lounge

I was thinking of a pioneer reciever, but am keen to get some views. We live in Singapore & the new high-end sony stuff is not available here.

Loving reading this forum.

 

[Tone-uk]

I'd say Yamaha Z7 for the av receiver.

Not sure about the blu-ray player- I'm a bit sceptical over claims of better picture/sound! I'd have thought HD is HD and there is not much too improve on in terms of 0's and 1's. My advice is, therefore, to buy the best looker!

 

[maxwell]

Not sure about the blu-ray player- I'm a bit sceptical over claims of better picture/sound! I'd have thought HD is HD and there is not much too improve on in terms of 0's and 1's. My advice is, therefore, to buy the best looker!

The reason for better picture/sound is the processing of the 0's and 1's, as you rightly say you cannot improve on the actual bitsream but you can improve on the way it is processed and output, compare a very cheap bluray player to a high end one and you can see it for yourself

 

[Tone-uk]

Hmmm. Not convinced! A 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0. The signal is either sent correctly or not? Any post processing that's adds to this is not true. I suppose the only issue will be something to do with clocks - as in how the 0's and 1's are sent in terms of timing/buffering. Whether or not this is an issue remains to be confirmed. I know there are some receivers starting to offer things to sort this "problem" out but, another marketing ploy is my initial thought.
As for comparing - Excellent advice. I should have mentioned that!
Whether or not anyone does that and just takes the advice of reviews I don't know. I suspect most don't!
I've tried comparing a few by borrowing from my mates but, I'm sticking to my Panny BD35 I think! Any differences I believe were minimal IMO and more to do with me than the output.
So, I'm standing firm on this one! More expensive ones maybe better built, have quicker start-up time, look pretty and have more options. But, quality of output - not anyway as big a difference as reviewers suggest IMO.

 

[maxwell]

Its all about how clean the signal is delivered so that minimal error correction is required, and if error correction is needed the speed and accuracy is tantamount to quality, look at sky digital if your dish is slightly out of line, you get broken audio and blocky picture this is because the error correction cannot cope with the noisy/weak signal being fed to it

Yes your right about the clocks, its all about timing accuracy hence companies like Trichord Research and Tom Evans constantly developing Reference Clocks that began with CD players, Incidentally Tom Evans and I used to be in business together and developed some low noise power supplies and used them with his reference clocks in CD players, Laserdiscs and satellite LNBs and receivers with extremely good results.
If you dont know who Tom is, google him, If you do know who he is you are a serious audiophile and need no further information.

 

[dwhite]

Before this thread turns into a long discussion on the various merits of different bluray players, can I suggest the op posts a thread in the bluray forum for reccomendations on his player and keep this thread for av amps.