Open Mind Audio
Active Member
I have been trying to sort this out. I have an Apple TV and would like to listen to stereo music and multichannel TV programming (and multichannel music when available) in a living room type space. I was trying to avoid spending $1500 on an AVR -- I would like to use 5 active speakers like Genelec or Neumann (or similar) and 2 subs. (If it had to be 1 sub it would be ok.).
It seems that what I want is very old technology -- 5.1 audio has been around for a long time now. From what I can tell, the issue is getting multichannel PCM to the DAC and (or speakers if they have the DAC built in). I think the Apple TV will allow this, but only via HDMI. That seems to be the primary hurdle to address.
Ignoring the HDMI issue, there are a number of DSP solutions out there, many from MiniDSP and Dirac, which would be fine. Genelec and Neumann have their own DSP solutions too.
It seems that a computer like a Mac Mini might work -- USB output into a DAC. But from what I gather, there is no elegant, remote-control based UI like there is on the Apple TV for navigating the various options (Netflix, Hulu, Apple Music, etc). But perhaps I am wrong about this.
Has anyone come up with an elegant solution that isn't an AVR? I can certainly get a Denon (or whatever the ASR consensus is) and use preamp outputs. Perhaps that is the optimal solution and I am trying to hard to look for a different solution.
Thanks for all suggestions.
Here's a solution that works well for me.
- Universal Player (Oppo 205) with Analog Outs as PrePro: Connect the analog outs from an Oppo UDP-205, or a similar universal player, to your active speakers, using the 205 as a prepro. I use mine this way except with passive speakers and separate amps. This works well and the chain is very clean.
- Movies: The Oppo
processes Atmos andhas up to 7.1 outputs. For movies and YouTube, my Roku player feeds the Oppo with Atmos and surround sound via HDMI. - Music: For music, including multichannel, I use Roon and JRiver to control the Oppo, which reads audio files via Ethernet from my digital library or streaming sources. And I can fart around with any streaming source that shows the Oppo as an option: Apple TV, Amazon Music, etc.
- Movies: The Oppo
- For room correction:
- Get a UMIK microphone and REW to take your own measurements -- a great thing to do of its own accord.
- Start with physical tuning of the room before you do digital -- also a great thing to do of its own accord.
- For audio, use Roon, JRiver, or another media player that has DSP room correction, manually setting correction profiles based on the REW measurements (there are lots of great tutorials on this, and it will bring you a lot of awareness of your room and equipment).
- Finally, for movies ... you're partially stuck here. It's the one limitation to this approach, in that you won't have a good digital room correction option. However, if you've worked on your physical room correction, you should be in great shape. And in my opinion, physical room correction beats digital room correction anyway.
PS - There are other limitations to this approach I did not mention, such as the limitation to 7 channels and challenges playing at low volumes when using discs. But if the goal is to avoid an AVR, this is a well-measuring way to do it.
PPS - I incorrectly stated the Oppo can process Atmos and corrected that. It can't, alas. Good explanation here:
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/of...blu-ray-player-owners-thread.2821841/page-127
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