Upgrade or throw it away and start again? N00b - Halp please (1 Viewer)

[MilesPNZ]

Hi all,

First time poster here and audio n00b so go easy.

Ok so I have a mix of old and new. This means I only have optical running to the amp and can't take advantage of any modern audio formats or ARC.

Our current setup is as follows -

AV Receiver - Denon AVR 3808
Main speakers - Anthony Gallo Reference 3 (tweeters have been pushed in)
Center - Acoustic Research CS25
Sub woofer - KEF Model 30B
TV - LG C7 OLED 55
Blu Ray - XBOX One S

We watch a mix of Netflix and Blu Ray but also want the system to be good at pumping out music when I am cooking or we have guests over. If there is a system that works well with multi room so I could put a speaker in the kitchen that would be nice but not needed.

Potentially we are going to move to a smaller apartment this year but I am not sure we will. So the system needs to be ok in the current space as well as a smaller space although I doubt that the actual home theater space will be much smaller than what we have right now.

So my question is this..... Should I just start fresh and get an out of the box 5.1.2 system or should I upgrade the AV Receiver and the center speaker (I think its shot).

If I upgrade I am looking at the Denon X 3500H and the Klipsch RC52. Only problem with that is that I don't have 5.1.2 and only have a 3.1 setup.

Budget is around $1000 USD but I can stretch to make it worthwhile.

 

[Robin9]

Why have your speakers' tweeters been pushed in?

 

[MilesPNZ]

Why have your speakers' tweeters been pushed in?

Children......

 

[Radioman970]

lol

Years back we were moving out an old console tv bought in the late 70s that somebody bought off us for about $125 and behind it to our embarrassment was a big bar of very old cheese. My neph. lol At least he didn't flush that down the toilet like he did a lot of stuff that disapeared around the house.

 

[DaveF]

The easy answer is to upgrade the gear. The Denon is over a decade old and might support blu-Ray, but won’t do Atmos or 4K, which sounds like might be of interest to you. Your speakers definitely need replacing.

A receiver like the Denon 740 for about $500, if you want to get to 5.1.2.
https://usa.denon.com/us/product/hometheater/receivers/avrs740h

Speakers, I’m not current on. But to get a surround system for about $500 requires sacrifice. You should check in the speaker forum on this.

 

[MilesPNZ]

I took everything onboard from this and other forums.

Ended up getting the Sony HT-ST5000. I wanted a solution which can scale with us if we move to a smaller apartment.

It arrives tomorrow and can't wait to get it running. Reviews seem fairly positive.

 

[Mysto]

I took everything onboard from this and other forums.

Ended up getting the Sony HT-ST5000. I wanted a solution which can scale with us if we move to a smaller apartment.

It arrives tomorrow and can't wait to get it running. Reviews seem fairly positive.

Well done. Let us know your thoughts when you get it.
And welcome to the HTF.

 

[MilesPNZ]

Have the system together.

I had it all wired up and working ok but wasn't impressed with the audio quality of the built in apps from the TV such as netflix. What was worse was when I put in an HD blu ray of Interstellar and dialogue was super quiet while the rest of the movie was way to loud. At that point I did some googling and realised that Interstellars audio is actually like that on purpose so that made me feel a bit better. I tried the Martian and it sounded great.

So I then tried using the built in Netflix app on the Xbox and WOW it sounded amazing. Far far superior to the TV audio. Turns out that ARC is far more limited than I realised. So I did some reasearch and the only way to get the kind of audio I want is to not use ARC and in the end I wired up an Apple TV 4K because its supports ATMOS and Dolby Vision.

Now though I have an issue where in a black scene or screen I can see little white flickering bits. Almost like an old movie on film? Any suggestions on what might cause this? The Apple TV is outputting 4k 50hz in Dolby Vision but the Xbox was doing the same thing.

 

[Todd Erwin]

The easy answer is to upgrade the gear. The Denon is over a decade old and might support blu-Ray, but won’t do Atmos or 4K, which sounds like might be of interest to you. Your speakers definitely need replacing.

A receiver like the Denon 740 for about $500, if you want to get to 5.1.2.
https://usa.denon.com/us/product/hometheater/receivers/avrs740h

Speakers, I’m not current on. But to get a surround system for about $500 requires sacrifice. You should check in the speaker forum on this.

Actually, you can get the Denon AVR X2400 for $330 on Amazon on clearance. It's a bit beefier than the 740 (not by much),