Hi, I'm thinking about Christmas gifts for my parents, and thought "audio", they currently have an Onkyo AVR 5.1 system for TV & Movie, and a crappy little Bose CD "boombox" for music listening in their dining room. I was thinking of making their music listening more flexible by buying somekind of fairly portable player that can store ripped CD's and hook up to their Onkyo AVR as well move it when they want (portable) to hook up to their little boom box in the dining room.....they could move it between the two (or leave it connected to the AVR)....I think playback through their 5.1 AVR system might be the main attraction as I think the potential for better more immersive sound is to be had from playback from the AVR & it's speakers. So I'm after buying advice for such a portable player device as I have no real experience in this domain? Another bonus of hooking up to the AVR might be multichannel music, maybe some tracks are recorded in Dolby Digital, I don't know if that would be the required format re my parents AVR for multichannel sound? And how would 2channel music sound on this system, I think it's got Dolby ProLogic as part of it's arsenal for converting 2CH to 5.1, but I'm not sure on this?
For reference here's some relevant screenshots of the various inputs & capabilities of my parents Onkyo AVR (HT-R538):
It seems to me that I'd want some kind of a player that could hook up to one of the digital inputs because it says in the manual that Dolby Digital & DTS are accessible through those connections, which might be useful if they want to listen to any music recorded in multichannel?? I really don't know much about multichannel music. For the main part I think they'd be listening to music recorded in 2CH, their existing CD's which would be ripped to the device.
Do you folks have any advice for me on these fronts, and maybe ideas I'm missing re the music player/gift that would make better use of their existing systems?
EDIT: ease of use would be a factor, as they're in their 70's and not the most tech savvy, although they're not too bad, they both got smart phones & use a laptop with varying success!
For reference here's some relevant screenshots of the various inputs & capabilities of my parents Onkyo AVR (HT-R538):
It seems to me that I'd want some kind of a player that could hook up to one of the digital inputs because it says in the manual that Dolby Digital & DTS are accessible through those connections, which might be useful if they want to listen to any music recorded in multichannel?? I really don't know much about multichannel music. For the main part I think they'd be listening to music recorded in 2CH, their existing CD's which would be ripped to the device.
Do you folks have any advice for me on these fronts, and maybe ideas I'm missing re the music player/gift that would make better use of their existing systems?
EDIT: ease of use would be a factor, as they're in their 70's and not the most tech savvy, although they're not too bad, they both got smart phones & use a laptop with varying success!
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