biefs
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What to do
RGibran
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Greetings, and welcome to the forum!

It's unclear to me from your post if you are trying to meld a home theater and two channel system or just build a seperate two channel system? Assuming your trying to meld the two, I offer the following thoughts.

The melding of a two channel and multi-channel system is enough to drive one bonkers, thus the reason I suspect many, particularly here, don

mrlowry
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Rgibran is right. The problem with using an amplifier hooked up to the preamp outputs of a receiver offers one major pit fall, the sound quality of the Denon

biefs
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Thanks for the replies and advice.I am going to try the Integrated and will see how it turn out.I really dont want two seperate systems and also don't want to change wires all the time.I'll give feedback once I have everything going.Thanks again.
Elmar

RGibran
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Quote:
Of course the best solution at this level really is having two separate systems. Every other solution has some compromise to the sound of either two channel or multi channel sources.

Just what would those compromises be, MrLowry? The configuration with an integrated is exactly the same in two channel mode as a stand alone dedicated two channel system.

RG

Buddha
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Hey, everybody!

I read this thread before and had no answer. Then, I went out after work and got half lit and suddenly I get it.

Keep the Denon and the rest of your system, but build yourself a two channel Hi Fi "rig within a rig."

So, where to begin...

My own guilty confession:

How I do it is thus:

DVD player into a Yamaha whatever receiver.

The receiver's front L&R processor outputs go to my "actual" two channel preamp; so, I keep the front L&R speakers only "seeing" the preamp to seperate amp outputs. They never really get a "look" at the Yamaha.

The two channel preamp remains the recipient of my phono pre and a seperate CD/SACD digital front end, and none of those components ever see the "home theater" end of things.

It makes for a two channel system within the context of a home theater system that makes use of front L&R as though they are a stereo input.

The receiver preamp outs feed a couple of power amps for the rear channels (biamped), and the receiver only powers the front L&R upper effects speakers, the center channel front, and center channel rear speakers.

I wish I could draw it for ya, 'cause it all makes sense to me as I sit here typing and spinning.

What you want can be accomplished with relative ease if you plan strategically. In fact, you could even use a universal digital front end with the multichannel output feeding your receiver, and the two channel output going to your other pre/amp set-up or to your new integrated.

Did that make sense?

mrlowry
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One of the compromises that I was referring to is that the integrated amp and the receiver would have different power output meaning that when there was a dynamic passage in a movie the balance between channels would shift either because the integrated was more powerful or less powerful. Also since the front three channels were run off of two different amplifiers with different signal paths there would be a slight mismatch tonally at the very least. The front three channels should be as close to identical as possible when it comes to all things, including, but not limited to speakers, speaker cables, and amplification. When the sound of a wagon moves from left to center to right you don

Lamont Sanford
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I like that. Keep it simple. I just have an old amp hooked up from the television to two separate loudspeakers. The television acts as the center channel as well as volume control with the amp's volume level and EQ preset. It's cheap but effective. Of course, you need very good speakers and stereo television and you basically only have a three channel mock up. In between all this I have the cable box, DVD recorder, and SVHS recorder. No surround and hi-fi theater whistles. I'm not into all that. My main stereo system is in another room and is for music only.

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doesn't work that way. Dolby pro logic, Dolby 5.1 etc is an entire process...from the recording to teh playback. It involves the steering and placement of the voices etc...center channel is voices, with your setup vocals come anywhere, that is not what it is all about, that is not what a director and sound people want in a properly recorded movie or tv show, Even pro logic makes The Simpsons very cool..subtle background things, etc. Good speakers or not, you are accomplishing basically nothing in yopur attempt at whatever....IMHO

mjalazard
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It really depends on how compicated you want to be. If you follow Lamont's KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) advice, I would suggest getting some sort of noise isolation device. The RCA stereo output from many TV's and cable boxes can have alot of hum. Jensen makes an Iso-Max unit that really cuts down that noise. I have a simple system in a spare bedroom using a Sansui 9090DB receiver with the TV output hooked into the Aux input...the TV hum was terrible. The Jensen Iso-Max Cl-2RR cleared it up.

Lamont Sanford
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DUP, I'll draw you a picture. I'm sure the problem is the set up is too simple to visualize.

I mentioned all that simply by stating it doesn

RGibran
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Quote:
Did that make sense?

I'm amazed you did such a excellent job describing such a complex configuration in your half-lit condition. For those of us who have tackled the chore of trying to meld both systems it made perfect sense, and I suspect that even newbies could follow it.

Do you have your new toy hooked to the multi-channel inputs of the Yammy for multi-channel SACD, or did you purchase a two channel player only. C'mon Buddha, that puppy is burned/broke in by now. Time to give up the ghost. You promised us a mini review.

RG

CECE
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Speakin' of chickens, you know you can't make chicken soup out of chicken sh*t. The most basic cheap, small, miniscule HTIB with teh OBSOLETE Pro-Logic will give you better effects than what you are doing. There is more to surround then just having the speakers, it's the entire recording process during the making of the show. Listening to just stereo mode, and going to the most basic, OBSOLETE ProLogic all of a sudden fills in the rear channels (MONO) with information not even heard with what you describe. Go to best buys or ckt city, get teh cheapest smallest, most basic HTIB it will do a better job than with what you are doing now, with less sized parts.

Lamont Sanford
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Whatever

Jim Tavegia
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If someone wants ot do a simple 3 dot one system....Jolida makes 2 three-channel anmps, one with a remote and a sub pass through. The JD 1703 you have to turn the knobs yourself. Pity.

Niles makes an affordable stereo input switch box with 5 ins. You can run all your stereo sources through it and the center channel of your DVD player directly into the Jolida center channel imput.

It is your money if you don't care about rear channel effects then don't sweat it. You could add later on a Jolida 2 channel (stereo) amp to cover the rears at some point. They make those in a remote and non-remote version as well.

I have been running my TV sound into my stereo long before there was stereo audio in TV broadcasts. It just sounded better and made TV watching more fun. I did not care if it was the best or highly regarded by audiophiles. It was just fun.

The good part is that this inexpensive Jolida gear sound significanly better that a cheap HT receiver, and listening in 2 channel is much more enjoyable this way.

Just a thought.

Lamont Sanford
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Once again a simple solution for just having fun. I like that.

And here is another example of a breakthrough, miracle, or an idea for a new Home Theater label...

"Breakthrough Surround Sound Technology: Digital Sound Projectors add surround sound to your music, movies, TV shows, and video games, without the need for rear speakers. Versatile processing and built-in amplification team up with dozens of speaker drivers to beam the sound precisely where it needs to go The result? Room filling home theater audio from a single component"

I bring you the Yamaha YSP-1000!

This is unacceptable. Next we are going to have audiophiles using their old equipment to enjoy television and then utter chaos! This must be stopped. This looks like a job for Team America!

cyclebrain
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I too wanted to combine A/V and stereo but focus on stereo and use an external two channel amp for stereo.
First I bought a cheap Sony A/V reciever and a set of schematics and tapped into the pre/main circuit. OK but not great. Then I bought a NAD A/V reciever with preouts. Didn't sound good either. Tested it and found the frequency response was really bad. Called NAD and was told that they only spec the amplifier section and not the front end.
Next I bought a Yamaha A/V reciever with direct bypass mode.
This seems to work very well with my external amplifier.
The YPAO function is a joke though. It only equalizes the center speaker in the HTR-5860 model even though they make it sound like it does a room parametric equalization of the whole system. The direct mode does sound good though.

JoeE SP9
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In 1976 I experienced two major audio happenings. The first was hearing and buying a pair of Magneplanar MG-1's. Since then my main rig has not had any box speakers. The second was purchasing a Pioneer TVX-95. It was a TV audio tuner with standard line outs. This was waaaaay before stereo TV. From that time I have used my rig for listening to TV audio. I even connected my first VCR (Beta)the same way. Although I use my 4 ESL's surround processor and all my other goodies for movies and TV, when it comes to music it's two channels and only two channels unless the recording is multichannel. I don't have very many of them so multichannel music playback isn't very important to me.

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