New system advice needed

[GXAlan]

I forgot about tariffs. I'll look into that. I found a used Arcam AV40 at a good price. Thoughts on this avr?

A used Monolith HTP-1 is a better product UNLESS you can find an amazing deal on the AV40 which offers a path to 8K. The AV40 has Dirac with Dolby Volume if I recall. Setup is a bit idiosyncratic as the setup menu that you see on the mini screen is not viewable on the main screen.

You can look at the review here, but in real use, you’re not going to have an issue unless you have a very low gain amplifier. Your Parasound and Emotiva will work great.

Edit; I had a previous generation Arcam SR250. I tried buying an open box AV40 from BestBuy but mine was DOA. Reliability is hit/miss but it seems like if you get a good one, it is fine.

 

[augerpro]

Just bought a new in the box Denon AVR-X3700H for $1k. That should hold me over until the tariff stuff is past and maybe I'll get lucky and it will have the AKM chip and will be easy to sell with not much of a loss! Anyone have a pic of the chip so I can take a look when it arrives?

 

[augerpro]

So I have a Samsung S90D and I'm testing that it can output LPCM via eARC to the Denon AVR before I get the MiniDSP HTX. I've set the TV to output "PCM"; the other two choices were "Auto" and "Passthrough". In "Auto" or "Passthrough" the AVR shows "Multi In" when I play a 5.1 DD movie on my PC (J River) and plays as expected. When I switch to "PCM" the Denon shows "Stereo" and indeed only plays stereo. TV problem? Denon problem? I can't see a way to stream LPCM in J River.

 

[kyuu]

So I have a Samsung S90D and I'm testing that it can output LPCM via eARC to the Denon AVR before I get the MiniDSP HTX. I've set the TV to output "PCM"; the other two choices were "Auto" and "Passthrough". In "Auto" or "Passthrough" the AVR shows "Multi In" when I play a 5.1 DD movie on my PC (J River) and plays as expected. When I switch to "PCM" the Denon shows "Stereo" and indeed only plays stereo. TV problem? Denon problem? I can't see a way to stream LPCM in J River.

You need it set to "auto" or "passthrough". In "PCM" the TV itself is generating the audio and I believe it will only do stereo. What you want is for it to pass the audio through unmolested from the source, hence "passthrough". "Auto" should typically correctly do passthrough, in my experience. The HDMI Input Audio Format, if I'm remembering the setting correctly, should always be set to "Bitstream".

 

[augerpro]

And the MiniDSP Flex HTX with no decoder will play that?

But here is where it gets weird... It appears "Multi In" on the AVR means it is an LPCM signal. Otherwise it should denote the codec being used (DD, DTS, etc.) The good thing is it appears this is LPCM and the MiniDSP shouldn't have an issue. But is weird that I get this when the TV is set to "Auto" or "Passthrough". Neither of these (apparently) pass the audio undecoded from the source to the AVR.

 

[kyuu]

Are you quite sure your PC is putting out the undecoded Dolby Digital stream and not decoding it and sending out LPCM? Though either way, whether the PC is decoding it or the TV, if your AVR is receiving LPCM then the Flex should get the same and have no issue with it.

 

[augerpro]

It may be my PC doing the decoding. I need to investigate.

EDIT: appears J River outputs a decoded stream by default. I guess that works ok.