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Topic: Buying 6.1 surround sound receiver - speaker recommendations... (Read 2064 times) previous topic - next topic
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Buying 6.1 surround sound receiver - speaker recommendations...

Hi everyone

I've decided it's time to ditch my amp/cd player and get into this surround sound stuff.

The receiver I like the look of is the Cambridge Audio Azur 540R v2 (maybe the 640R but it's a bit more pricey) as it will allow me to hook up my dj mixer, my custom media centre PC, my PS2 and my DVD player.

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?...20AV%20Receiver

I've owned Cambridge Audio kit in the past and have been pretty impressed and this receiver seems great value, and apparently has excellent stereo audio qualities as well.

But I'm confused about what speakers I need to get.

I have my L+R floorstanders that I used with my amp - which will do for the time being but eventually I'd upgrade these.
But I also need to get a centre speaker and a sub.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a centre and a sub?
If I can get them for a total of £120 then I'd be happy. Looking at prices, centres and subs seem to be fairly reasonable.

What other speakers would I need to get?
L, R, centre, sub is 4 speakers. What are the other 2 channels? Another left and right?


Also, I have a more general question about surround sound...
If I have my PC connected through a optical or coax digital connection, and play a DVD through that in VideoLan, does the receiver automatically output as surround sound when it can?
Likewise if I play a DVD through my PS2 console connected through the optical digital - will the receiver auto detect or will I need to switch it between the various surround modes or stereo modes?


Thanks
Ben
Current HTPC: Mini-ITX Zotac Ion board with Intel Atom CPU

Buying 6.1 surround sound receiver - speaker recommendations...

Reply #1 –
Hi !

I own myself a Harman kardon  avr 5000 , (and a denon 1060 amp for stereo), previously before the harman I had a denon 1801 avr amp for 4 weeks, which sucked sound qualitywise, so that I sold it at ebay with some money loss and invested even more money to get the harman.

Nowdays I'd recommened either a Harman receiver or maybe priceworthy, Kenwood 5100 or 6100, great sound, installed it for my gf.

Speakers:

I run 4 speakers, L+R , plus L+R-Surround/backwards.
No subwoofer. no center.

The Surround speakers you need anyways, and if you have good main front speakers with enough bass capabilities, why a sub or a center ?!
Especially, if you have as surround speakers full speakers, which have also bass, which is nice eg. for DVD-A.


The avr amps have some automatic recognizing, which signal is coming from cd/dvd source digitally, eg. 5.1 DTS, 5.1 DD/ac3, or 2.0 PCM stereo, or HDCD.
Don't worry, digital connection between cd/DVD player and amps are nice, perfect, even with cheapo CD/DVD-player, I recommend you strongly to invest most of your money into speakers, then suitable amp/receiver, the lowest amount of money into cd- or dvd drive, where you could use your silent pc, if you have a soundcard, which doesn#t resample internally to the evil 48 kHz, and digital out.