maxbrooker
Established Member
I have upgrade fever whilst stuck at home and am looking to go from my Yamaha 3070 to a Pre/Pro and Power Amp(s) combo. Budget is £5k. My System is 7.1.4 - 80/20% Movies/Music. Professionally Calibrated and sounds pretty good, but perhaps lacking in detail and "oomph" in the surrounds at times.
I currently have an Emotiva XMC-2 and XPA-11 on home trail. Having spent ages setting up the EQ based on similar data from my Yammy it sounds relatively good, but it's not the Wow that I expected for the £5.6k price tag, but it is more detailed. It may need more work and tweeking of course, but it's a little lacking in functionality compared to my old Yamaha in terms of manual EQ settings. There's no option to set crossovers for each speaker, which seems very odd and I hate the interface, it's very basic. Dirac is supposed to be coming, but not sure that be a deal breaker?
I have also lined up a home demo of the Yamaha CX-A5200 and MX-A5200, which whilst a safe option (coming from a Yamaha) does get very good reviews, extremely reliable. Great interface and easy to set up EQ. I don't bother with YPAO. It's also the most cost effective choice with various deals going on. Will see how it sounds by comparison.
I was looking at Arcam as a third option. The professional calibration guy I used suggested Arcam would be the way to go, however the AV860 whilst a good price at the mo is relatively old but the new AV40 is apparently full of bugs and get's mediocre reviews. I prefer to buy the latest tech when I can but If I went with an AV860 I would be looking to pair it with a Conrad Johnson amp for the fronts and perhaps a combo of IOTA VX 7 and 2 channel power amps to power the rest of my set up, or maybe an Emotiva XPA-9. This option is not easy to home trial so would be a make or break.
A final option is to just buy a decent power amp for now and use the existing 3070 mainly as a processor, just powering the height speakers, then save some money and wait to see what new processors come on the market later this year, with Dirac and HDMI 2.1 future proofing.
My big worry is that I end up spending £5k on something that only only sounds 10% better than my current set-up and I regret it.
I would really welcome some other opinions on which options would be worth pursuing.
I currently have an Emotiva XMC-2 and XPA-11 on home trail. Having spent ages setting up the EQ based on similar data from my Yammy it sounds relatively good, but it's not the Wow that I expected for the £5.6k price tag, but it is more detailed. It may need more work and tweeking of course, but it's a little lacking in functionality compared to my old Yamaha in terms of manual EQ settings. There's no option to set crossovers for each speaker, which seems very odd and I hate the interface, it's very basic. Dirac is supposed to be coming, but not sure that be a deal breaker?
I have also lined up a home demo of the Yamaha CX-A5200 and MX-A5200, which whilst a safe option (coming from a Yamaha) does get very good reviews, extremely reliable. Great interface and easy to set up EQ. I don't bother with YPAO. It's also the most cost effective choice with various deals going on. Will see how it sounds by comparison.
I was looking at Arcam as a third option. The professional calibration guy I used suggested Arcam would be the way to go, however the AV860 whilst a good price at the mo is relatively old but the new AV40 is apparently full of bugs and get's mediocre reviews. I prefer to buy the latest tech when I can but If I went with an AV860 I would be looking to pair it with a Conrad Johnson amp for the fronts and perhaps a combo of IOTA VX 7 and 2 channel power amps to power the rest of my set up, or maybe an Emotiva XPA-9. This option is not easy to home trial so would be a make or break.
A final option is to just buy a decent power amp for now and use the existing 3070 mainly as a processor, just powering the height speakers, then save some money and wait to see what new processors come on the market later this year, with Dirac and HDMI 2.1 future proofing.
My big worry is that I end up spending £5k on something that only only sounds 10% better than my current set-up and I regret it.
I would really welcome some other opinions on which options would be worth pursuing.