Help, AV receivers have me totally confused

[Daigohji]

I'm planning to finally make the jump from having my 2.1 PC speakers plugged into my HDTV's headphone socket to having a proper 5.1 surround sound setup. The problem is that I have so many devices to connect, the logistics are making my head swim. Here are the devices and connections that will be included aside from the TV:

PS3 (HDMI, this is also my primary Blu-ray player)
Xbox 360 (HDMI)
Upscaling DVD player (HDMI, my primary for DVDs due to it being region-free)
PC (VGA or DVI for video, 3.5 mini-headphone or two RCAs for audio)
Wii (component)
PS2 (RGB SCART)
PS (RGB SCART)
VCR (RGB SCART)
SNES (composite)

So, of those, the devices that generally support surround are PS3, 360, DVD, and maybe the PC. I'm guessing how I need to do it is to buy an AV receiver that supports audio over HDMI, and connect the PS3, 360 and DVD through it with HDMI. The PC video would go directly to the TV, with the output from the sound card going through the AV receiver. Since the other devices are stereo and I haven't seen any AV receivers that have SCART inputs, do I just hook them up to my TV directly and run twin RCAs from the TV's audio outputs to the AV receiver?

Is that how I do it? Would that introduce any input lag to the HDMI devices running through the receiver? Would I get audio lag versus the picture for the stereo devices being connected directly to the TV?

What about if I had a TV that had an optical digital audio output? Could I then just connect everything directly to the TV and run the optical output to a simpler AV receiver?

Or are there any TVs that can process Dolby 5.1 internally, and would enable me to connect a set of 5.1 PC speakers directly, cutting out the need for an AV receiver?

All this has my head swimming. Any help would be much appreciated.

[neorichieb1971]

A lot of stuff indeed.

DVD get rid unless you really want to keep it.

Connect as much via HDMI as you can.

The scart devices will have to go straight to the TV unless svideo is your thing. I don't think receivers do scart.

PC... if your card has 5.1 fibre optic out then use that to your receiver, otherwise use the TV audio inputs and use a 3.5mm jack cable from the headphone socket to the receiver. I do something similar myself for all my gear. Most TV's have a speaker link mode in the settings for audio which allow you to control the volume from the TV or the receiver.

Its not that hard to set up. The simple fact is that you have so much stuff. Personally some of those things i'd have set up one at a time. Like a PS2, Saturn or DC etc. I wouldn't have them connected all the time.

Besides for all that stuff, you need a pretty expensive receiver, like £800+

[Daigohji]

Thanks for the info. I wouldn't have all of that hooked up at once, I just wanted to illustrate the various different connection types I need to account for. AV receivers are my technological blind-spot. I don't know what features I need to be looking for to ensure maximum compatibility. Does something like this one look like it would be adequate? http://www.richersounds.com/product/av- ... y-strdh510

[StarCreator]

In general, it's not all that complicated, especially if you use HDMI for all your devices. Just plug your TV's optical output to your receiver's input, as suggested above.

As far as receiver recommendations go, I would choose this one based on a friend's recommendation. It provides lag-free output modes in addition to all sorts of nice bells and whistles for a great home theatre setup.

[gray117]

The only possible consideration maybe lag, but in such cases [gaming] you'll always have the option to hook up the picture via vga/component to tv with rca cables for audio ...

I'd be very surprised if any av receivers actually performed lag free scaling - they should provide a seemless pass through service however for hd signals already at target resolution - this will simply require research per model...

But, of course, if you are not too sensitive to this you may well find they perform perfectly for your purposes even with a tiny weeeney bit of lag.

I have always hooked audio via rca and picture direct to display [favouring vga connection, or 'making do' with component] for game systems... on my tv, however, I had always noticed more processing/lag/less accurate color on hdmi and component than on vga...

The snes and vcr ... ergh hard to say - but probably not worth worrying about too much with their respective picture quality.

PS1 could be supplied by PS2 compatibility via component?

Anyway, despite my reservations over the gaming benefits of any av receiver picture scaling the audio boost you'll get from a receiver such as these, and some decent (don't need great) speakers, will be well worth it - probably even just stereo sound let alone surround. And in all likelihood your key pieces - the ps3, 360, pc and dvd - will sound great and should manage to be hooked up all at once.

[Fudoh]

PS1 could be supplied by PS2 compatibility via component?

Many (not to say most) AV receivers are not compatible with 240p signals through their component inputs. This is true for native sources (e.g. PS1 games on a PS2) as well as for RGB Scart to YUV transcoding (e.g. a Saturn through a CYP transcoder).

[Daigohji]

Unfortunately I can't ditch the PS1 anyway. It's currently the only system that will play my US and JP imports. My PS2 used to be able to play them, but lost that capability when a certain component in it bricked.

Many thanks for the input so far. Any further thoughts welcome.

[Daigohji]

After reading some more reviews, I'm currently leaning towards this: http://www.richersounds.com/product/1-b ... ts3305-blk

At £300 for the receiver and speakers, it's at the top end of what I was looking to pay. It supports TrueHD, has three HDMI inputs and an HDMI output with a v1.4 compliant Audio Return Channel, plus optical audio, and a bunch of other inputs. I've not heard of Onkyo before, though I'm not knowledgable about speakers. Does anyone have any experience of the brand?

[neorichieb1971]

Onkyo are a good brand. Sometimes they make a product which has a wealth of features that only more expensive brands supply. I have heard that some of their old receivers had this clipping side effect with blurays, but it only happened with certain discs. This was sorted out over time though.

If you want good all rounder receivers the brands to look at are Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo and Pioneer.

[StarCreator]

Onkyo is a very good brand for home theatre. Make sure you research it well though - both Onkyo receivers I have experience with introduced lag that couldn't be worked around, so for gaming purposes (at least if you're as far into music games as I am) they were useless.

[neorichieb1971]

Good point.

[Daigohji]

Onkyo is a very good brand for home theatre. Make sure you research it well though - both Onkyo receivers I have experience with introduced lag that couldn't be worked around, so for gaming purposes (at least if you're as far into music games as I am) they were useless.

That sounds problematic. Could you give me the specifics of your setup? What console was it? How was it connected throught receiver, and was this with a video signal that the receiver was having to scale?

[StarCreator]

This was back when we were using it for beatmania IIDX, so it was a PS2 outputting digital audio only to the receiver via optical TOSLINK cable. The video signal was hooked up directly to the TV - I prefer not to have the receiver handle video signals if I can avoid it.

[Fudoh]

I think most Onkyo AV receivers have a 50ms minimum AUDIO delay - probably just to cover the introduced video processing lag in case the video signal is routed through the processor. On a sub 400 Euro AV processor you don't gain anything video processor-wise in comparison to most TV sets. To outperform a modern mid-class TV in terms of video processing you either need a dedicated video processor (outside of an AV processor) or a much more expensive AV receiver.

[Daigohji]

I've looked up the manual for the Onkyo receiver and it looks like there's a manual setting for audio delay:

A/V Sync
When using progressive scanning on your Blu-ray Disc/
DVD player, you may find that the picture and sound are
out of sync. With this setting, you can correct this by
delaying the audio signals.
■A/V Sync
0 ms to 100 ms in 10 ms steps
Note
• A/V Sync is disabled when the Direct listening mode is used
with an analog input source.
• The setting is stored individually for each input selector.

Of course, it doesn't say whether there's any additional audio delay that can't be configured with that setting. As for that bit about the sync setting being disabled for analog inputs, I suppose if I used either HDMI with an ARC channel or digital optical to output the audio from the TV to the receiver for any devices connected directly to the TV, then the receiver would detect all audio inputs as digital and enable the A/V sync setting. That way I could turn off the audio delay for games. Maybe. Does that sound right?

[gray117]

It's a bit of a muddle isn't it?

... I would imagine you can configure each input to a 0 audio delay and that would mean that (for sake of reference) audio would come before any scaled video.

The question for you is whether you can simply plug in a hdmi cable and have the video outputted unprocessed and undelayed...

[Fudoh]

To my knowledge, NOT on the Onkyo receivers (as said before: minimum processing lag of 50ms, even for audio only).

The lip sync option just adjusts the Onkyo's audio output (= adds audio delay to the minimum processing delay). For example: if you have a TV which adds 50ms of delay, then set the lip sync to 50ms to synchronize the picture you see on your TV and the audio you hear out of your speakers.

[Daigohji]

After doing some more reading, it looks like I don't have to worry about whether the receiver supports Dolby TrueHD. I'm using my PS3 as my Blu-ray player, which I've found out decodes TrueHD audio internally, outputting it as Linear PCM over HDMI. So (for Blu-ray at least) the receiver just needs to support LPCM at the appropriate frequency for lossless Blu-ray audio. I guess this opens up my options a bit.

So if I were to buy the speakers seperately from the receiver, what are good brands/models to go for with 5.1 speakers and what receivers are likely to be lag-free? This is for a room measuring 11' x 12', so I don't need vastly powerful speakers, just a well rounded sound. I'm looking to spend about £300-350 total for the speakers and receiver.

EDIT: Maybe a Sony STRDH510 receiver and Jamo A102 HCS5 speakers? I notice that the sub-woofer in that set is 200W. Would that mean it needs its own direct mains power supply rather than drawing through the receiver?

Also, does speaker cable quality make much difference? There seem to be all sorts of different grades from the same manufacturers, but I don't know how much I should be spending on it for this kind of setup. Is it the type of speakers or the required length that determines what type is best, or are the premium types just a scam?

It really bugs me how little I know about this stuff. Thanks for all the help so far.

[StarCreator]

I'm a little behind on current developments, but I always thought LPCM was limited to 2 channels due to the cable's bandwidth limits, thus the need for the receiver to be able to decode compressed bitstreams if you have a speaker setup consisting of more than 2.0 pieces.

[neorichieb1971]

The Asian movie Protege (good movie btw) registered a full 7.1 LPCM on my PS3 the other night. Although I don't have the equipment to deal with it.

Most LPCM tracks are 2.0, but thats got more to do with the way its been recorded. Does LPCM use a standard bandwidth then? I thought irregardless of the audio codec you could have the bitrate as high or as low as you authored it.

[Fudoh]

Does LPCM use a standard bandwidth then?

usually yes. 1,5mbit/s per Stereo channels (in other words: 4,5mbit/s for a 5.1 track and 6mbit/s for a 7.1 track). In comparison: DD5.1 tracks on DVD usually have 448kbit/s and most DTS tracks on DVDs have 768kbit/s both 5.1 and 6.1.

[StarCreator]

My statement had more to do with the ability to transport the stream to the receiver, not the authoring of the media. Your saying you don't have the equipment to deal with 7.1 LPCM sort of proves my point...

[Fudoh]

SPDIF (coax or optical) is limited to 2ch PCM, but HDMI can easily carry uncompressed 8ch (7.1) PCM.