downgrade a/v system to upgrade stereo ?

had this idea before.
currently a/v system is a cyrus av8 retail is £1100, plus 2 cyrus power amps, were £500 now superseded by cyrus smartpower.

so the option is:
sell av8 plus the pair of powers
something like ... £700 for the av8, £250 each ? for the powers, so £1100 to £1200 ?

replace the above with a semi-decent home cinema receiver, the like of marantz or denon at around £400
e.g. marantz sr5400 £400
pioneer vsxd912 £390


and then use the rest towards a £1000 Cyrus Pre X

seems to make sense.

as long as the a/v receiver has decent pre out signals to go to my cyrus monoblocks.
and of course, i'd have to keep swapping the nuvista i/c's that i would use on the a/v side for the a'zens on the stereo preamp.

any thoughts ?
thanks
robert

[edited] i say "downgrade a/v ..." but it may be an upgrade given the lacklustre performance of the av8 according to some reviews ![/edited]

 

Do you know that on the Pre X you can set the AV input to bypass the volume control, Cyrus dont make it public knowledge for some stupid reason but its easy enough to do, and that would eliminate the need for swapping interconnects.

Turn off at back, hold down standby button and AV input and turn switch on at the back, leave held down until power up sequence is complete......you now have a volume un-controlled AV input.

Sorted.

And the pre X is fantastico superdoo, and you know me, I love my Cyrus. It will be miles ahead of the AV8 for you.

 

robert,
which do you do more of, listen to music or watch tv? to be honest given that ac3 and dts are compressed formats i'd be maximising 2 channel playback until the multichannel / extended resolution format wars have finished and a clear victor emerges.
i'm still dubious of hi quality claims for affordable multi channel amps though, purely from a cost of goods point of view, something has to give somewhere for them to sell 5 channels instead of 2 for a given price. so i'll stick with my dsp-e800 and i suggest most others interested in music do the same or similar.
cheers


julian

 

julian, stereo is more important than surround cinema, ended up with the processor as it was the one hit option to get me started with a decent preamp and surround processor in one box. now those £400 a/v boxes have moved on, with dts neo etc (whatever that is) so moving back to 2 separate boxes, and getting a source > dedicated stereo preamp > pair of monoblocks is the way forward, then add on the a/v box much the same as you have with the e800. had the e492 predecessor which was pretty good, but looking for something reasonable. and also potentially allows me to separate completely i.e. 1 box solution for a/v.
might have a flick through a tv magazine, and see if pete at local dealers would lend me an a/v box to try out.

 

If you're selling your AV8 I might be interested

Michael.

 

it's a Cyrus AV8 not the Arcam AV8, just so you know !

if this plan comes to fruition, then the av8 will be for sale. you'll see here ......

 

Julian, I think it's a little unfair to call them simply compressed formats (e.g. like MP3) - they are data reduced of course but it's done in a very clever way i.e. the bits that are removed are the bits you wouldn't hear anyway - a bit like removing the sound of a ticking clock when Concorde is taking off - you won't miss it.

Dobly digital details here: http://www.dolby.com/digital/diggenl.html

I know were not talking high res DVD-A/SACD here but when done well DD and DTS can be very good indeed.

As for Robert's dilema, unless movies have become a non-issue for you, I wouldn't recommend downgrading to a budget AV amp as this will be a good step down from the AV8.

Are you using a Cyrus DVD player by the way?

Matt.

 

matt,
mp3 is a very similar system to ac3 in that it too removes 'music you cannot hear'. dts is superior to ac3 as it only has to store timing info on the film strip to synch a special cd with the sound on it. ac3 has to store the entire soundtrack in the same area.
dts runs at about 1411 kbps, cd at about 7000 kbps mp3 at 192 kbps (on a good day) and ac3 at 220 to 440 kbps (as like mp3 it's variable bit rate). bear in mind that cd and mp3 are for stereo whereas ac3 and dts are for 5.1.
imho to spend multi thousands primarily to playback 282kbps per chanel or 88kbps per channel is folly as there is going to be a lot of 'hidden' music to squeeze the data that tightly.
if people are aiming to invest heavily in multichannel music from sacd or dvd-a (fnarr) then fair enough but as i say for butch... er... compressed formats i don't think it;s worth it if all you intend to do is kick back with a beer and some popcorn and veg out to x-men or charlies angels.

cheers

julian

 

Julian, Dolby Digital and DTS are compressed like you say, but they can still sound surprisingly good, and you do get considerable gains going up to an expensive processor from a budget one. Whether it matters to you or not is another issue indeed, and if you just like to watch the odd movie now and then then it's probably not worth it.

But if you think about it, the bitrate for full bitrate DTS (which is 1400-something kbps), is rather high. 1400kbps for 6 discrete channels is equivalent to 466kbps stereo MP3, which is very high, and probably sounds no worse than CD except in the very best hifis listened to by the most golden of ears. Full bitrate DTS is rare, though, and is usually half bitrate, which is still equivalent to 233kbps stereo MP3. This is still relatively high quality, and for film soundtracks I very much doubt you'd notice the difference between that sort of compression and uncompressed PCM.

Dolby Digital is more heavily compressed (either 448kbps or 384kbps), but the 6th channel (the LFE) is substantially lower bitrate as it is cut off at 120Hz, so it's harder to say what sort of quality it might compare to.

But don't dismiss DTS and DD just because they're compressed.

Dunc

 

duncan,
don;t get me wrong, i'm not saying that nice results aren;t achievable with compressed formats but at the end of the day ac3 and mp3 have both had their frequency spectrums selectively filtered and then noise reduced. if a 2 channel product did this to your cd's i bet it wouldn;t sell very well and would be picked up for quality quick smart. when i was working in an office i listened to mp3;s most of the day and it was always a relief to get home and listen to some music on my hi-fi. the mp3 vs cd question has been debated long and hard and personally i can usually tell the difference when an mp3 and redbook are played back to back. all i'm saying is that if multichannel is only used for casual movie watching then spending thousands on reproduction equipment simply isn;t worth it.
in the context of this thread it's yet another reason to hang fire on expensive multichannel until either sacd or dvd-a(titter) is a viable proposition to replace cd's.
personally i think at present (and for the use outlined above) a dsp-e800 or marantz 4200 is perfectly adequate as long as your 2 channel music is not going through the processor.
cheers

julian

 

hi matt, no cyrus dvd, it's a pioneer 737.
the cyrus av8 is a reasonably good preamp, and pretty good at dd5.1 / dts, and the matching cyrus amps i'm using for centre (cyrus power monoblocked with psx-r) and rears (cyrus power in normal stereo mode) perfectly adequate.
was just wondering if a single box may be another option. did consider the arcam avr2000 (is that the number ?) the £800 rrp a/v receiver. heard blade on WM's system (a while ago, with the gr20's) and that was a pretty gutsy performance. maybe if i could find one of these going cheaply ?
then thought about one of the £400 or so new a/v boxes.
no comparison, then, matt ?
maybe i'll keep the cyrus box count at 9, and add a 10th in the shape of a cyrus pre x .....

 

ROb, I would like to point out mate, the the monitors weren 't powered by the Avr 200, but by the Belcanto, so please bear that in mind. Wm

 

Just a quicky kind of on topic, was thinking of connecting my PACE NTL cable box to my hifi instead of the cinema kit I have for radio listening only but I understand that the quality is shite. Worth a go a or a real no no?

 

thanks WM - would only be running the centre and rears in my sistem (sic) too. in which case i wondered whether a semi decent japanese massive box with hundreds of sockets on the rear panel would suffice.

 

not clear from above just what is presently connected to what. However, since I am also trying to get the 'radio' part right, let me re-phrase your question in the context of my kit.

At present, I have

main HiFi kit as
CDset-up (transport + dac)
into
stereo amp
into
big L/R speakers

and AV kit as

dvdplayer and PACE TeleWest
into
Denon AV2802
into
small L/C/R + sub. speakers
with pre-out for surround into stereo amp (above)

[yes, I listen to music facing the fireplace with main speakers either side (but with back to telly), and then re-arrange furniture to watch telly and AV.]

At present I 'listen' to 'radio' through AV set-up and have been thinking how to re-route via speaker 'set-up' to my main stereo speakers - as looking at a blank telly in order to listen to radio is weird, and the sound certainly could be better.

But as you seem to imply, the question is whether the digital music from cable of comparable quality to that which could be got from a dedicated tuner, of an analogue or DAB persuasion. Do I just get that denon tuner?

 

Or you could add this as the 10th box and sell the 737:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3058917256&category=3272

Actually, also noticed that hifibitz and doing heavilly discounted (discontinued) Cyrus DVD players e.g. £600 for a new DVD7.

In my opinion there would be no comparison. I say that based on the fact that when my (less good than your AV8) Rotel RSP966 processor was with the dealer to fix a fault they lent me a well thought of Yamaha A5 AV amp. As it had pre outs I used it as a processor only letting my Rotel THX amp provide the power - it wasn't bad but it was a fair step down from the Rotel (£650) processor.

When I upgraded from the Rotel to a Tag AV32R there was another big jump in performance - in fact, big jump with films, very big jump in stereo. The difference with films was a lot more natural, less brash sound but lightening fast processing.

I would imagine the Cyrus AV8 falls somewhere between my Rotel and Tag processors and I therefore feel you would be pretty disappointed if you went back to a budget AV amp.

However, the only way to really find out would be to borrow a budget AV amp and give it a whirl.

Matt.