i am horribly disappointed in the audio of my AVR, an Arcam SR-250. It’s muddy sounding and unmusical and I’m a music lover that spends about 75% of the time listening to music via Roon or QOBUZ or DVD rather than watching TV. The Arcam is almost six years old now and it went down just past its five year warranty. Im not inclined to have it repaired. I came here hoping to find a replacement AVR but was disappointed to see how bad they were measuring. I turned to SSPs or Pre-Pros which are reported to be better sounding and was about to buy the Marantz SR-7705 when I saw the perfectly dreadful measurements. Where to go from here?
I have five video sources, one more than my TV will accomodate. Plus I think TVs are clumsy at switching and access to HDMI sockets on wall mounted TVs like mine are nearly impossible to reach if something needs attention or I need to make a change. So I’ve always been lusting after an AVR. I finally bought the ARCAM SR-250. It’s a two channel AVR which I chose deliberately because I have zero interest in surround sound. I don’t watch the kind of movies where surround sound is featured, and besides that as I said before, I am a music lover, especially I like opera and classical music and I listen to music most of the time via Roon or DVD. All this is to say I like really good quality audio.
to get around the bad audio on the Arcam I unboxed my vintage Pioneer SX-1050 Stereo Receiver. It had been stored in my closet for about 30 years. I ran RCA composite cables between all my video sources to the Pioneer and voila! I got excellent audio! The Arcam is now just an expensive video switcher and now that the Arcam is down, I bought a cheap 5x1 HDMI switch to replace it and I am getting by this way, but I worry that this cheap little switch will fail. The reviews on Amazon are pretty bad. And I also am wondering if I am transferring noise and distortion to my music Via that cheap little switch,
So to my point: Are there any surround sound processors (Pre-Pros) that have decent audio? If not, am I missing something else I could be doing? My vintage Pioneer is actually working quite well but it has some limitations, it has no remote control, it is shy one audio input for my needs and it is too big to fit in a compartment on my video console, I’ll probably keep it anyway, but I’d sure like something to replace that little HDMI switch.
Video sources:
DISH Hopper DVR
Oppo USP-205 DVD
Roku Streamer (plus added gadget to strip off audio from HDMI and route it to Pioneer)
Pioneer Elite CLD-99 Laser Disc (Requires S-video or component cables)
Panasonic VHS Player (Requires component cables)
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