I am about to venture into the world of home cinema and buy a Pioneer DV-868 dvd player. Am contemplating using its inbuilt Dolby/DTS 5.1 channel decoder to go straight into a Copeland hifi pre/power amp. The question is how good are the onboard decoders in this dvd player? Am I likely to compromise sound quality in doing it this way?
Most DVD players internal decoders are not as good as an equivalent AV receivers. The pioneer (although no experience of this player) is a good quality DVD player. I would be tempted to add a good quality processor to your existing hifi. as I feel this would produce a much better sound.
Hard question, really depends on the quality of your amp and whether it provides the necessary control over the surround-sound setup and calibration .. I've no knowledge of the Copeland. The DACs in the 868 are pretty good, I personally don't hear a difference between the 868 feeding the discrete inputs on my 3803 or the 3803 doing the decoding/preamping .. but then at my age one's high-end hearing is lowered and there's where the main difference would expect to be I think.
I am actually in the process of doing some checks on this.
I have the 868 and am running through a Denon AVC A1 SE (with the k upgrade ) amp.
Its due to me doing a dem for a friend. whilst testing we played the Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells 3 live dvd. I had previously been demoing some dvd audio material.
I had left the amp on the external 6ch input. As I wanted to show the Psuedo ex effect when using all 7 speakers I switched the input to my digital coax in connection ( chord company codac cable) to our surprise there was a distinct drop in thequality of the sound. Much duller and less clarity.
Switching back to the external input led to a more revealing brighter sound.
As I said I am in the process of trying some more material through both outputs, but bear in mind that if you have an ex/es amp that the rear speakers will not operate when using the analogue 6ch input.
If anyone else out there has done some tests like this I would be intersted to hear what results they had.
Originally posted by Ultra2man
As I said I am in the process of trying some more material through both outputs, but bear in mind that if you have an ex/es amp that the rear speakers will not operate when using the analogue 6ch input.
If anyone else out there has done some tests like this I would be intersted to hear what results they had.
I've compared the internal DD/DTS decoding of my Pioneer 757i with my Tag AV32R (BP-192) and, as you would expect, the Tag is leagues ahead. The Pioneer isn't bad though and I guess would compare with some budget AV amps perhaps.
The Copland (and I assume you're talking about the CVA306 6 channel valve pre amp) is a lovely bit of gear. Although you have to rely on the DVD player for DD/DTS decoding and cannot of course apply an processing to analogue sources (DPLII to TV etc) the flip side is an outstanding 6 channel pre amp that should be superb for DVD-A/SACD.
It might be worth trying out the Pioneer if this is possible and also comparing it to the likes of Denon's 2900 and maybe Sony's 999ES (the Sony doesn't do DVD-A mind).
Finally, I presume you won't be using the Pioneer for CD replay as again, it's not bad, but a dedicated CD player would be a lot better, especially with a quality pre/power amp like the Copland.
Thanks for your response Matt. I am new to home cinema although I do have a good hifi system (Quad CDP, 44/405 pre/power and ESL63 electrostatics with Audio Pro sub) and want to try and use the Quad ESLs as a front pair and adding Quad 11L rears. Also keeping the sub for home cinema.
I want to keep the warm sound and have been advised a possible route might be to change the Quad pre/power combo to a valve set up such as the Copland CVA306 pre and CVA535 power. I am nervous about the capability of the Pioneer 868s inbuilt decoder. I am only thinking about the 868 as I want to partner it with the Pioneer 504 50 inch plasma to use the HDMI capability.
I am really being too ambitious?
An alternative would be to keep the Quad pre/power and add a Pioneer VSA AX10 processor feeding the Quad electrostatic front pairs via the Quad power. But my retailer thinks a better sonic solution would be to have the Copland feeding all the speakers.