Thumpermawer
Established Member
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 305
- Reaction score
- 333
- Points
- 164
Most of my AV time is spent listening to music, more so now that I'm WFH and am able to listen to music throughout the day. I am itching for the lockdown to be lifted for a million reasons, and one of those is being able to get back to gigs. Even so, ever since I spent most of my wages from a first job on a Sherwood receiver from Richer Sounds so that I could listen to the glorious Dolby Pro-Logic tracks on VHS tapes I've favoured having an AV Receiver at home to handle the music and movie duties.
However, I'm getting bored with having to regularly shell out to replace the perfectly functional amplification in my receivers to unlock the higher quality available from newer formats in newer boxes. So the processor/power amp combo format is appealing. Particularly as I don't want a particularly complex system and typically with AV receivers the quality of amplification increases in line with the receivers feature set. In the past I've had success improving av receivers with power amps (Cyrus and Linn were both huge improvements, Rotel was a wash with the Denon receiver I had at the time).
What's not appealing, is that processors are typically in much higher price brackets than the equipment I'm used to buying. What's the most affordable processor you know of? I searched most of the dealers with online presence and found precious little under £2.5k.
OK then, buy a budget receiver and use the pre-outs to feed power amps? Nope. By the time you've got to a level where the feature set includes a full set of pre-outs you're already spending around a grand, so it's not much more to get one with reasonable amplification included.
Is there really no market for a ~£500 processor? There's plenty of Receivers at or under this price point offering new formats and connectivity that have integrated amplification, why the reluctance to offer the same models sans amps?
I think the closest I can find is the slimline Marantz NR 1711, but even then it includes some unnecessary amplification and only pre-outs the fronts (which isn't too bad for me, as these would be the priority for music).
Are there any other options - does anyone make a device that adds AV to a stereo amp (av processing and centre and rear power)? Or am I going to have to set aside more money for features I don't need so that I can get the ones I do want?
However, I'm getting bored with having to regularly shell out to replace the perfectly functional amplification in my receivers to unlock the higher quality available from newer formats in newer boxes. So the processor/power amp combo format is appealing. Particularly as I don't want a particularly complex system and typically with AV receivers the quality of amplification increases in line with the receivers feature set. In the past I've had success improving av receivers with power amps (Cyrus and Linn were both huge improvements, Rotel was a wash with the Denon receiver I had at the time).
What's not appealing, is that processors are typically in much higher price brackets than the equipment I'm used to buying. What's the most affordable processor you know of? I searched most of the dealers with online presence and found precious little under £2.5k.
OK then, buy a budget receiver and use the pre-outs to feed power amps? Nope. By the time you've got to a level where the feature set includes a full set of pre-outs you're already spending around a grand, so it's not much more to get one with reasonable amplification included.
Is there really no market for a ~£500 processor? There's plenty of Receivers at or under this price point offering new formats and connectivity that have integrated amplification, why the reluctance to offer the same models sans amps?
I think the closest I can find is the slimline Marantz NR 1711, but even then it includes some unnecessary amplification and only pre-outs the fronts (which isn't too bad for me, as these would be the priority for music).
Are there any other options - does anyone make a device that adds AV to a stereo amp (av processing and centre and rear power)? Or am I going to have to set aside more money for features I don't need so that I can get the ones I do want?