DTS---->SH-AC500D vs MILLENNIUM (1 Viewer)

[Tom Garvey]

Old school.. I know!

Which one should I get?

 

[Stephen Dodds]

Get the Technics. Much more flexible. Sounds the same.

Steve

 

[Tom Garvey]

Thanks Stephen.. What kind of flexibility? Niether has bass management.. is this right?
BTW.. nice looking pad you have there and the speakers are..... well I have no words. They must sound damn good.

 

[Tony Lai]

The SH-AC500D has fixed 80Hz.

Millenium I don't remember but the manual is on the site.

T.

 

[Chuck Kent]

Ummmm... I never owned either one but I "thought" that the Technics did do bass management on DTS (along with DD. I remember a 100 or 120 Hz highpass/lowpass point though.)

The Millenium does not do any bass management at all. All you can do is to indicate whether or not you have certain speakers present. But if you do, they need to be large...

 

[derek]

I have the 500d. I believe the crossover is 100hz. It does have a six channel passthrough which is nice. The only negative on my unit (I believe newer units resolved this) was it does not autodetect dd/dts.

 

[RichardMA]

The Millenium sounds better than my Sony TA-E9000ES
DTS processing so I would bet 100% it sounds better
than the Technics unit.

 

[Philip Hamm]

The Millenium is an audiophile grade pice that was build (like a tank) by MSB technology and originally listed at $599. It has excellent Burr-Brown DACS and Motorolla processing. It has pass-through and is extremely flexible in setup. It also has no bass management beyond sub on or off. DTS only.

The Technics is a mass market mid-fi piece that is not the same build quality or component quality. However, it does Dolby Digital, which the Millenium does not. It also is extremely flexible but I think it has bass management.

I had a Millenium for a few years and I loved it. Fantastic sounding unit.

 

[Tom Garvey]

Philip,

What are the speaker settings? Are just the fronts set to large or are all speakers set to large?

Thanks everyone!

 

[Philip Hamm]

All speakers are large all the time. Since most of my DTS stuff back in the day was LD which was mastered to use the LFE channel for most of the bass anyways, it wasn't a problem.

Aesthetically I think the silver Millenium is very nice indeed. Looks like a half rack professional unit and in fact it comes with rack ears should you want to mount it. Take a look at my "through the years" pages (click the little green house then scroll to the bottom and hit the link) to see it in my rack.

 

[Robert G]

I also have a Millenium decoder and it is a wonderful unit. I no longer use it because I upgraded to a Denon 3802 from a Denon 2700 (no DTS). But when I did use it I liked it a lot. As a matter of fact I really need to get rid of the Millenium (silver). If you are interested Tom, let me know and maybe we can work something out. I will have to look, but I think I have the original packaging with all of the parts.

 

[Tom Garvey]

Robert,
I'm interested.. email me with what you feel is a fair asking price plus shipping. [email protected]
I have a question to anyone.. Do/did you find the full range signal to the center and bookshelf rears to be a problem.. distortion?

 

[Gregg Loewen]

Tom, or anybody else, I have a Technics 500 for sale right now. $150 plus shipping. Email me if interested.

Gregg

 

[Kevin Alexander]

I'd go w/ the Technics that Gregg is offering. There is no difference in sound quality betwen the Technics and the Millenium.

 

[Tom Garvey]

Kevin.. Did you own both?

 

[Ken Leggatt]

I had the Technics piece and it is great! The newer units defintely are able to autodetect DD or DTS. I would get the unit for sure.

 

[Kevin Alexander]

I didn't own both, but I did compare it against the Millenium and the Rotel DTS decoder. There was no perceptable difference between the 3 to my ears.

 

[Don.K]

Tom, how are you planning to connect the decoder? I'm thinking of getting one too. Using a Sony SDP-9ES DD processor but wondering if I could connect a DTS decoder to it.

 

[Tom Garvey]

Don.. You can connect either of these two units to the EP9ES using the 6 channel pass through.

 

[Don.K]

Tom, I'm not sure how that works. Using the Sony as a preamp, digital out on dvd player goes to DTS decoder, 6ch analog out on DTS decoder to 6ch bypass in on Sony, then from the Sony out to 6ch poweramp. Did I get it correct?Using the bypass on the Sony defeats the vol. control, so the question is how do I control the main vol. then?

What I thought of doing is to connect the digital out on the dvd player to the DTS decoder, then using the digital out on the DTs decoder, connect to digital input on the DD processor. Will this work?