Yamaha RX-V1400 w. B&W 600, comments pls

S

Shahrouz

Guest
I plan to purchase my first HT system. My final selection is the following components:


Receiver: Yamaha RX-V1400

Speakers
Main L/R: B&W DM 603 S3
Centre: B&W LCR 60 S3
Surrounds: B&W DM 601 S3
Subwoofer: none for the moment
Cables: not selected yet. However, quality cables will be used.

The system will be used 60% music - 40% movies. The kind of music ranges from classical, opera, Jazz, ... to trance and Pink Floyd.

Now, Is it a good matched system? Will it sound bright / warm / neutral?
I know that room acoustics will play a major role. But, I don't want a disaster; too bright or too warm!


Comments are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
 
The setup sounds fine to me. i have the Yamaha and its a nice sounding amp. you should as for a demo first if you can.
 
Shahrouz,

The combo should sound fine.

Alot will depend on what the room is like - 603 S3s generally like a powerful amplifier with plenty of current - the character is generally quite smooth with plenty of punch in the bass.

However careful placement of the fronts is critical as in some smaller rooms and medium size rooms against the wall they can boom a bit resulting in an overly slow sound.
Although the amplifier is quite powerful the 603 S3 speakers are quite demanding as well as revealing so you might not be getting the best out of them for music.

You might want to consider demoing the DM602S3 as fronts (a better match IMO) which will give you a slightly tighter bass and combine this with a good subwoofer such as Rel or one of B&Ws own.

Personally I believe you should add a subwoofer at some point anyway for movies as the reason DD and DTS are 5.1 systems is because the .1 is the discrete subwoofer channel.

Therefore without a subwoofer you will be sending the subwoofer information to the fronts which IMHO can sometimes affect the performance of the fronts as they have more bass to produce as well as their own channels.

Good luck with your purchase and demo first, also tell the dealer what your room is like and where you intend to position the speakers (draw them a picture of the room) - hopefully they can advise you on what will work best.

Good luck.
 
if you go for the 603's consider a 600 center as the 60 might be a little small.
 
A bit small :eek:

The LCR60 is massive and heavy. The LCR600 is even bigger & heavier. I would never recommend standing the LCR600 on the top of a TV.
B&W do recommend the LCR600 with the 603's, but I only have the LCR60 with mine and it works very well IMHO. I could have got the LCR600 but just had no way of placing it above my plasma. I think I would have ended up putting the plasma ontop of it! :D

Mark.
 
Thanks for all comments,



MarkE19,

How is the sound of AVR-3802 with B&W's? .......... bright / warm?
 
For movies the 3802/B&W's are great. For music I was very dissapointed and therefore added the Arcam amps to drive the front L/R and connect CD etc to. It's not that it's that bad, just after a good HiFi system the 3802 (and count all other AV receivers in this price range) just sounded a bit flat.

Mark.
 
Originally posted by MarkE19
For music I was very dissapointed and therefore added the Arcam amps to drive the front L/R and connect CD etc to. It's not that it's that bad, just after a good HiFi system the 3802 (and count all other AV receivers in this price range) just sounded a bit flat.

Agree with you there MarkE19,

Hifi speakers used to sound a lot better before all these Av amps came along.
 
Subwoofer choice: You'd obviously get on well with one of the B&W 600 series subwoofers, even though they are quite expensive.

Personally I'd be careful about the full AV kit when you are going to listen more to music than movies. As others say the Denon or Yamaha will be great for movies, but they will sound rather dull for music compared to a decent stereo amplifier. I'd attempt a demo if possible so you can really hear the difference and decide if you can live with it.

An interesting alternative would be to think about one of the MArantz AV amps.... e.g. the SR7400. Marantz amps tend to be less spectacular with movies, but far more musical. Speaking from experience with the SR9200 - movies are ok, but music is excellent in AV amp terms. Bit higher price than your selection, however...

One final point: At the moment i.link is becoming a big thing for transferring DVD-A and SACD decoding from the DVD player to the amp, in the same way as we currently use the amp to decode DTS and Dolby Digital. If you think you might buy an i.Link equipped DVD player at some point, you will obviously want an i.Link amp which can handle the digital datastream. The old Denon can't do this, and neither can the rather newer Yamaha. I think at the moment only the top Yamaha model and various Pioneer AV amps are capable of this, plus probably some Sony AV amps.
 
Originally posted by cmo
Agree with you there MarkE19,

Hifi speakers used to sound a lot better before all these Av amps came along.

I sold my B&W 604/603/CC6/ASW6 setup with Yamaha AV amp from 2000 and went pure 2 channel a year after having invested in everything. I just couldn't live with the music quality. Thankfully AV amps from 2004 are a lot better than my old RX-V795RDS, but even so....

The best thing is I can still enjoy movies via the 2 channel downmix to my stereo amp, and music is SOOOOOOOOOO much better!
 
nthornhill,

You're totally correct.

I hear this sort of story all the time but its really common sense.

Your previous Yamaha RXV795 cost say approx £700, which has 5 channels of amplification (not including the extra fronts which it probably had - can't remember)
so the way I see it you have 2 and a half amps and lots of processing to get in the way.
Divide £700 by 2.5 gives you a £280 equiv stereo amplifier plus using one power supply to drive all channels.

You are then driving £800 604s (I think that was their price) with a £280 stereo amp and lots of interfering processing.

Yet for hifi we often perceive the idea that the speakers should cost approximately the same as the amp or in many cases (since speaker technology is so much better lower down the price range) the amp should maybe cost more.

Maybe its a magazine thing or maybe people just don't care so much about music these days or are used to listening to rubbish.

just my own opinion of course.
 
Originally posted by nthornhill
Subwoofer choice: You'd obviously get on well with one of the B&W 600 series subwoofers, even though they are quite expensive.

Personally I'd be careful about the full AV kit when you are going to listen more to music than movies. As others say the Denon or Yamaha will be great for movies, but they will sound rather dull for music compared to a decent stereo amplifier. I'd attempt a demo if possible so you can really hear the difference and decide if you can live with it.

An interesting alternative would be to think about one of the MArantz AV amps.... e.g. the SR7400. Marantz amps tend to be less spectacular with movies, but far more musical. Speaking from experience with the SR9200 - movies are ok, but music is excellent in AV amp terms. Bit higher price than your selection, however...

One final point: At the moment i.link is becoming a big thing for transferring DVD-A and SACD decoding from the DVD player to the amp, in the same way as we currently use the amp to decode DTS and Dolby Digital. If you think you might buy an i.Link equipped DVD player at some point, you will obviously want an i.Link amp which can handle the digital datastream. The old Denon can't do this, and neither can the rather newer Yamaha. I think at the moment only the top Yamaha model and various Pioneer AV amps are capable of this, plus probably some Sony AV amps.

nthornhill,

Thanks a lot for your comments,

As I said before, this will be my first HT system. I've always heard that HT receivers are not so good for music, of course, it seems that new receivers are better. Especially, I've heard of good stereo performance of RX-V1400 (www.cnet.con, www.areadvd.de).

However, my approach will be, first setting up the HT system. Listening to music through DVD player (budget Yamaha DVD-S540, already purchased) and AV-receiver. My next move will be purchasing a dedicated CD player. NAD C521 seems to be a "cheap-in-price/rich-in-quality" machine.
After that I will decide whether to go for an integrated amp, a power amp or a separate audio system.
 
For me the best improvement was going from a fully AV only system to the Arcam amps driving the front speakers for AV & HiFi. I connected the preouts from my 3802 to the DVD input on the Arcam amp and connected an old CDRW to the Arcam. This was 2 steps in 1 as I went from AV to biamped HiFi within the same system, but I think the amp is still the best VFM upgrade for music. A dedicated CDP will be an improvement but IMHO will still be vastly let down by the AV receiver.

Mark.
 
Originally posted by MarkE19
For me the best improvement was going from a fully AV only system to the Arcam amps driving the front speakers for AV & HiFi. I connected the preouts from my 3802 to the DVD input on the Arcam amp and connected an old CDRW to the Arcam. This was 2 steps in 1 as I went from AV to biamped HiFi within the same system, but I think the amp is still the best VFM upgrade for music. A dedicated CDP will be an improvement but IMHO will still be vastly let down by the AV receiver.

Mark.


Mark,

Many thanks for suggestions.

How about an integrated amp, like Marantz PM7200?
Will an integrated amp, in <1000£ price range, give good results? Compared with an AV-receiver in the same price range?
 
To get the best out of an external amp for music it really does need to be an integrated amp as the weak link in AV is the preamp. Therefore you would still need to use the AV receiver for music if just connecting a power amp to control the volume, input etc.
My Arcam Alpha 8r was below the £1k price when new and I think it is a great HiFi amp, so therefore the amp you suggest should work very well. One thing that will be very handy is a processor mode on the amp as this will then bypass the volume etc when being fed from the AV so you only have the one volume control to worry about. My Arcam has this, but not sure about any others.

Mark.
 
Originally posted by MarkE19
To get the best out of an external amp for music it really does need to be an integrated amp as the weak link in AV is the preamp.

Reallly? Have you tried both using a pre-amp into a AV receiver and a AV receiver as a pre into a power amp? Adding a power amp to my system has made a big difference, I haven't tried it the other way around yet.
 
Yes I have tried it both ways and although the power amp made a difference, when replaceing it with just the integrated it was much better. I then connected both to biamp and the improvement was again very noticeable.

Mark.
 
Shahrouz

Just acquired a similar system - set up project for tomorrow. Started with 602s as fronts (originally used with Technics cdp/amp). Whilst I have still to hear in the comfort of my own home, I was very pleased with the demo.
 
Thanks again Mark for your comments.

Originally posted by degsy
Shahrouz

Just acquired a similar system - set up project for tomorrow. Started with 602s as fronts (originally used with Technics cdp/amp). Whilst I have still to hear in the comfort of my own home, I was very pleased with the demo.

Degsy,

Congratulations on the new system.
 

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