I am already on the journey to migrate from AVR to Separates. Right now I am using my AVR only as Pre-Pro.
Would love to hear the worth of improvement in sound/picture quality from the FMs who have upgraded from AVR to Separates!
I have thought of going this route on at least a couple of instances in the last several years - but have always stopped short of going the whole hog.
My first attempt was maybe 5 years ago when I was spotted a great deal on a Marantz AV7701.. However before taking the plunge, I decided to test separates by moving an existing Integrated Amp (Marantz PM-17) to the AV setup wired to the pre-out on the AVR (Marantz SR6010)
I personally found the improvement underwhelming - perhaps a little improvement in overall dynamics but could never really tell for sure.
The Amp was certainly not at fault - but the capabilities of the SR6010 may have been a possible culprit.
Anyway, because of the relatively limited improvements I perceived, I decided to cancel the plan of going separates.
Last year, during the lockdown I was bored and started looking at separates options for a different setup in the living room (based on a Denon X3500)
This time I decided to experiment with a class D Amp (Crown XLS) to keep cashflow losses in check before plonking down big bucks for a Pre. After getting the XLS, I felt that the HT playback remained largely unchanged but stereo playback had some small improvements (Some more detail if you will )
YMMV may vary of course, especially after replacing the AVR with a full fat pre-processor (which I never really got around to doing)
Also, having discrete amps will surely help with loud passages
As things stand though, I have left The old SR6010 paired with a very old Marantz PM17 (for LR only) in my HT room and the X3500 paired with the crown XLS in the living room (Again, LR only)
A well thought out reply. Thanks.
A thought about room correction is that it is doable, the simplest and easiest (though not most effective IMO) would be something like JRiver or Dirac for PC.
Am I right to understand that the general reason for not using the PC is -
Cost
Ease of use/Practicality
Dirac is expensive and I dont think they sell PC licenses any more - at least they weren't when I was experimenting in a similar vein a few years ago. So that effective leaves only DDRC on mini-dsp as a viable option.
Jriver - worth a try probably, no real experience with it ..
This could be just me but I think when it comes to room correction, i have my doubts about freeware/very low cost sw based room correction ..
Its a biased opinion colored by my early experiments with REW..
ARC and Audyssey XT32 are the methods I use and REW results were not even remotely comparable
Having said that, There is surely a big market for good room software based room correction - especially when you consider that processing power is cheap and obscenely priced RC options like Trinnov are built on x64 platforms anyway..
Just need someone to crack it!