AV RECEIVER WITH ALL CHANNEL ANALOG INPUTS

[ISO]

How about powered speakers?

 

[hifitoaster]

If you want to leverage the potential of the sound card, you may build 5 amps only. That will take care of the speakers. AVR will not be required.

I second this, as u may end up having a better sound than an entry level avr. Get 3 pairs of topping amps or similar.

 

[hifitoaster]

How are these old av receivers compared to new one in terms of analog amplification? Sound quality? If there is no big difference used in analog mode, I will look this option.

Depends on brands. But mostly the top receivers 10 years ago has very good amps like the new ones. Not necessarily an upgrade. Avrs evolve more with the codes and room correction not much with amps. Thats the reason why it's still safe to pick up a stereo amp from 80s for pure stereo.

 

[MaSh]

I have asus essence st with h6 card. And plan is to play amplifier for Klipsch reference series ( bookshelves).

Another reason for analog amplifier is, I am person of maintain gear for long time, and I don't want to change AV receiver after there is new audio codec released or when 4k goes to 8k. I am pretty sure calibrated video quality from Htpc is no less compared an good AV processor. I am ok in just upgrading a GPU card.

Dont we all want that. Buy once and use it for ever. Considering 4k is yet to take over the Full HD market, 8k seems a long way off. There are higher chances of your PC dying before that happens.

How are these old av receivers compared to new one in terms of analog amplification? Sound quality? If there is no big difference used in analog mode, I will look this option.

Difference depends on how it was used, in what kind of an environment it was used, repaired, serviced, etc. All these take a toll on the components, biggest killer being Dust and Heat.

One more question. Will the decoding done by a sound card will be routed via HDMI. If possible, what is the advantage of that?

If HDMI, then everything is bitstreamed to the receiver to process. Sound card is out of the equation for HT.

Yes I understand analog is not possible via hdmi, so sound card is of no use when we use hdmi.

Continuing from above reply; If you have a good Sound Card with good stereo output. Then you can connect the Front 2 speaker out from sound card to a Stereo Amp connected to the speakers. This way you can setup Foobar to output sound to your Sound instead of the receiver. You can have two independent setups for HT and Music listening.

In my opinion, get a simple receiver, connect PC to it via HDMI. Get a HDMI 1x2 splitter. Connect Receiver HDMI out to the splitter and then connect your Projector and TV to the splitter. You are done. If you get a receiver with 2 HDMI out, then splitter is not needed. Simple and reliable.

MaSh

 

[spirovious]

2 days back l connected 5.1 out of xonar d2x to 5.1 in of marantz avr.Comparison had mixed results.While playing movies, I certainly missed some settings in avr as audyssey is bypassed.The timing was missing in 5.1 clips.Yes some paid softwares do offer extra,but again you need good pc hardware for that.In music,I enjoyed xonar sound more than marantz's internal DAC.Both use Burr Brown dac chips.Xonar had better soundstage and better presentation.On other hand avr had little cleaner sound.I still remember old generation AVR used to be better than xonar.I have tried at least 8 different avrs in my setup .

 

[arunlouie]

2 days back l connected 5.1 out of xonar d2x to 5.1 in of marantz avr.Comparison had mixed results.While playing movies, I certainly missed some settings in avr as audyssey is bypassed.The timing was missing in 5.1 clips.Yes some paid softwares do offer extra,but again you need good pc hardware for that.In music,I enjoyed xonar sound more than marantz's internal DAC.Both use Burr Brown dac chips.Xonar had better soundstage and better presentation.On other hand avr had little cleaner sound.I still remember old generation AVR used to be better than xonar.I have tried at least 8 different avrs in my setup .

Thanks for sharing...

Tried Dirac? software based audessey?

 

[spirovious]

Thanks for sharing...

Tried Dirac? software based audessey?

Not tried SW based special dsp other than crossover selection in xonar.