Home theater receivers have evolved in huge and dramatic ways over the years. With so much change every year and so many brands available choosing one can be daunting for anyone. In this post I thought I would cover what I think about when making a recommendation to a client as well as what I think of some of my go to pieces. Today we are going to talk about the audio side of a receiver’s duties, next week we will dig deep into the video side!
But first let’s explore a bit about what the job of a home theater receiver is. I have long thought of home theater receivers as the brains or train station of a home theater. A receiver has to cover a lot of jobs that have drastically different demands I thought I would break these jobs down for you. Up first is a subject close to my heart, audio.
Yamaha is consistently one of our favorite AV receivers
Audio Processing and Room Correction
A receiver needs to be able to accept and process all or most of the audio formats that are available. It also needs to be able to take older formats and turn them into surround sound. For example if you are watch Casablanca on Bluray you can tell your receiver to either use the original format, Mono. Or you can tell your receiver to convert the Mono to a manufactured Surround sound format. I tend to be a purist, if I am watching a movie that was filmed in Mono I want to hear it in Mono. If I am watching Avengers I want the full lossless audio experience. While a receiver is handling these duties it also needs to be able to equalize the audio, more on this later, and send the proper frequencies at the right time delays to the proper speakers. When you set up a receiver and tell it that your right rear speaker is twenty feet away and your left rear speaker is five feet away the receiver needs to delay the info going to the closer speakers by the correct amount of time so that the sounds get to you at the same time. All of what we are talking about now is JUST audio processing. Already we are talking about a ton of processing which also opens up a lot of opportunity for mistakes. Earlier I mentioned equalizing, most modern receivers offer some form of room correction.
Room correction typically involves a microphone and a lot of noise. The receiver sends out audio information and listens to the responses via the microphone. It then uses the data to create the most neutral response that it can. If you have ever been
walking around someone’s theater and the bass suddenly got really loud or the higher frequency became painful you have experienced what the receiver is trying to correct. The receiver is also trying to correct for the reverb in a room so that it doesn’t sound like you are watching a movie in an empty gym! As you can imagine we are talking about a lot of math and a ton of processing. Some receivers and preamps do a remarkable job fixing “bad” rooms. Others not so much, unfortunately there isn’t really a quantitative way to tell what system works the best. We tend to use experience rather than specs to decide which system will really help us solve a clients room issues.
Amplification
After all of this processing and math is done it is time for the receiver to do the job it was originally designed to do, drive
A separate Amp/Processor will typically give higher performance
speakers. Once again we enter a world where there are HUGE differences in performance and technologies. There are a ton of amplifier topographies out there from the tradition class A/B to class D and H designs that seem to be all the rage with some manufacturers. I have been telling clients for years that if they really want great sound they should buy a standalone amplifier and use either a dedicated preamp or a receiver with preamp outputs. If you don’t have the space and or budget to go this route, which requires double the space and double the investment at least, don’t fret. You can always add an amplifier later or if you are doing a smaller theater many home theater receivers do a fine job. I tend to look at the efficiency of the speakers and the size of the room when thinking about the wattage of a receiver. I tend to be an “all things in moderation” kind of guy, however when it comes to amplifier power there are very few instances when more power isn’t better. More speakers get blown from being under powered then have ever been blown by too much. One thing to keep in mind is that not all wattage ratings are created equal. If you are standing in a big box store looking at a home theater in a box with 1000 watts of total power for $399, and we just talked about a receiver that has 90 watts per channel that was $1000 I can promise you that one of those wattage ratings has nothing to do with reality. In the above example the 90 watt per channel amplifier will sound exponentially better than a $400 unit with 1000 watts of total power. One of the things to keep in mind is that modern movies are increasingly sending lower frequencies at great volume levels to the surround speakers. To hear what I am talking about just pop in any of the new Marvel movies on Bluray. The upshot is that ALL of your surround channels are going to need lots of clean amplification. One of the things I always consider when looking at power ratings is if the stated ratings are for one channel driven, two channels driven or all channels driven. Building an amplifier that can drive five speakers with over one hundred watts per channel at the SAME TIME is not only difficult but expensive as well! Many receivers now have NINE powered channels. In short, beware anemic amplifiers! I have always felt that fewer speakers that are driven by a great amp will offer a better experience than lots of little speakers driven by a wimpy amp. The former gives you a dynamic, exciting and enveloping movie or music experience and the later gives you lots of noise. In short weak amps are bad for your speakers and your experience.
Anthem AV receivers and processors use a microphone to measure and correct the sound of your room
So far we have touched on processing, room correction and amplification. So what do I think about when specifying a receiver? Where processing and room correction come in I tend to look at the size of the room and the position of the speakers. Where a speaker goes can dramatically change the speakers performance, and I consider it the number one thing to get right when I am designing a theater from scratch. However if we can’t get the speakers in the proper locations and the room is a serious challenge I will often specify a receiver or preamp from Anthem. The reason is that Anthem receivers come with a much higher quality microphone and you use a PC to do the actually processing for room correction. Once the PC has crunched the numbers it downloads a file to the preamp or receiver so that the receiver doesn’t have to think about it anymore, it just follows the rules it received from the PC. Anthem even goes so far as to voice match the program with the microphone. Every microphone has its frequency response measured and the program disc you get is specifically tailored to that microphone’s response curves.
In a room with good placement and that isn’t too challenging and with a client who wants good sound but still wants to interface with iOS devices and perhaps need to send video and audio to multiple zones, I typically specify Pioneer Elite or Yamaha. I personally have been using the Elite receivers in my home system for years. I plan on adding an amplifier to my current SC-05 sometime in the near future. As for Yamaha, they offer great flexibility and in the years I have been specifying them both the Yamaha and Elite receivers have had a very low failure rate. I tend to stay with what sounds good, has flexibility, is easy to use and is as bullet proof as possible. There are certainly many other well respected manufacturers out there, but since my job is to design a system with as little risk for failure as possible I tend to stick to what I know works.
Next week I will go over the video side of a receiver’s role and offer up some insights as to how I chose between Pioneer Elite and Yamaha receives when making a recommendation to a client.
Pioneer Elite combines great sound with bullet-proof reliability
By the way for those who have been reading my posts, my Dragonfly is on the way and won’t be leaving my side!
And always remember; the proof is in the listening!
Do you have questions, ideas, or products you would like to see reviewed? Let me know what you want to see in this blog in the future! Contact me at JHeld@hifihousegroup.com