I had no idea they still make separate surround sound amps

[yoda313]

http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/processors/products/umc200

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57573961-47/do-separate-components-sound-better-than...eivers-part-2/

I used to have a NEC dolby surround amplifier as my first true surround sound unit and that was hooked up to a plain old stereo (way back when). I didn't think they still did that anymore. I thought it was all self contained in a single unit these days. (fyi it was dolby surround not pro logic - bought second hand when I had, eventually I did get a true dolby pro logic amp and then finally the dolby digital/dts amp that i have now that I have had for close to 10 years or so).

I have to imagine for even the most demanding forum member here this is probably overkill. I would imagine a solid kenwood or sony or onkyo amp with the full suite of hd codecs and a plethora of hdmi inputs would be more then sufficient for them. I'm not sure what the true benefit of having a separate processor for surround sound would be. I have to imagine for the vast majority of movie watchers an amplifier with the current hd codecs inside would be more than enough.

I just found it interesting that they still have separate amps for the surround processing.

[olyteddy]

Apparently there are a few. Some costing more than a Yugo!

[yoda313]

Thanks for the link olyteddy.

I like that onkyo that has 9.2 capability Impractical but cool sounding.

Yeah the ones at the bottom going for 30,000 plus??? What the??

I still don't know what the real home advantage would be versus a "normal" surround amp. Is it all about prestige? Or can you do more tinkering with acoustics and setting up things like speaker distance and individual speaker perfomance or something?

[Hoser Rob]

... I have to imagine for the vast majority of movie watchers an amplifier with the current hd codecs inside would be more than enough...

They are. But that doesn't mean that separate amps aren't better. They usually are.

That second link is (as usual for him) a puff piece but what he's saying about speaker impedance is 100% true. It's much more complex than just simply 8 or 4 ohms resistance. And high quality speakers are often more demanding loads for the amp. People who says "watts is watts" really don't know what they're talking about.

Or, conversely, cheaper speakers tend to be designed to be easy, less reactive loads because the customers are going to be using cheaper amps that will crap out into demanding loads.

There's actually no reason they couldn't make receivers with that sort of quality but amps that work well into any speaker load are big and heavy. Most people would find them too big.

I'm aware of T-amps but they're low powered and have such a high output impedance that they don't work quite so well into low impedance speakers. But they do work really well within their limits.

Also remember the size of the rooms that very expensive sound systems will go into. Small speakers just won't work very well in huge rooms. And you'll need serious high quality heavy amps to drive them.

However, there's definitely a point of diminishing returns here. I've been a bit of a hifi nut since the 70s and I discovered that years ago. Frankly, the vast majority of the recordings I own aren't good enough to warrant that much accuracy. High quality hifi doesn't magically make all your music sound great. What it does is tell your what the recording actually sounds like. In most cases that ain't pretty.

Movie soundtracks are much less demanding than music.

[yoda313]

Interesting. Thanks hoser rob.

As I haven't even gotten an amp with hdmi yet its really something I don't need to worry about right now. I'm not that much of an audio snob. What I do want is stuff that just "works". Also I am using them in an average home environment with speakers that wouldn't win any contest so anything too extreme would be wasted with my current setup.

[redwudz]

I have two of my PCs, my HTPC and my main PC and both output through the S/PDIF ports through a switcher to my Pioneer VSX-521 surround amp. No computer speakers on either PC. This lets me use my 5.1 system along with my subwoofers for great sound. I don't use HDMI sound either, though my amp can handle it. It's really no problem to turn on the amp when I turn on either of the PCs.