2. home-theater
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Just purchased an Anthem AVM 50 to Frankenstein with my Luxman 507

I’ll be posting notes here about how this goes.

The overall goal was to add HT without breaking my 2 channel setup. It would have been nice to add full 4k HDMI switching but all those options which I liked were $2,500 or more. I got the AVM 50 for $650 + Tax.


90% of HT I watch is streaming, so audio quality is usually limited to DD+. I can output DD via optical from the TV and I can use the TV act as a 4K switcher. I can hook up my Oppo 103 directly to the 5.1 inputs. The AVM 50 will feed L&R to the Luxman amp directly, and all other channels go to 120 W Class D amps that have been collecting dust, plus my sub via XLRs.

Audio I can’t see any negatives, but there are a number of remote steps which need to happen.

  1. TV - Select source
  2. Luxman - Click ’separate’
  3. Anthem - Volume

For another $2K or so I could have gotten 4k switching (which apparently is unreliable in several brand of receivers) and saved myself step 1.
erik_squires
caphill
674 posts
 
So, you're saying that your Anthem AVM50 does not decode DTS-HD Master Audio & Dolby True-HD found on bluray discs? 
The AVM50 can't be that old and I would think it would be able to support and decode those lossless HD audio formats on bluray discs. Even if it can't you can still use HDMI and set the HDMI configuration in your Oppo to output LPCM instead of bitstream for those bluray's lossless HD audio formats, so that way the Oppo will decode those DTS-HD MA & Dolby True-HD and sent them hi-rez LPCM via HDMI to your Anthem AVM-50. But for regular lossy Dolby Digital & DTS you can set the HDMI configuration in the Oppo back to bitstream. 

erik_squires OP
16,144 posts
 
Hey Caphill,
Per the comparison chart here:
https://www.anthemav.com/downloads/avm50_ComparisonChart.pdf

Anthem did not support DTS Master or DD TrueHD until the next model, the 50v. :)


Even if it can't you can still use HDMI and set the HDMI configuration in your Oppo to output LPCM instead of bitstream for those bluray's lossless HD audio formats, so that way the Oppo will decode those DTS-HD MA & Dolby True-HD and sent them hi-rez LPCM via HDMI to your Anthem AVM-50. 


That's' the whole point. :)


Best,
E

caphill
674 posts
 
Gotcha. :)
Sorry didn't read the whole thing. My bad.
erik_squires OP
16,144 posts
 
Sorry didn’t read the whole thing. My bad.


No worries.

So far when playing BD marked with DTS Master the Anthem is switching to DTS automatically. Apparently this is a feature of DTS. You get as much as your processor can handle:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD_Master_Audio


I’ll experiment to see if I can get the Oppo to automatically switch to multi-channel LPCM instead. If not, there’s always the analog outputs. :)
auxinput
2,920 posts
 
Erik, you may want to just try using the lossy form of DD/DTS.  It may actually come out better than 7 channel LPCM over HDMI.  I have tried LPCM on my system and it works, but it doesn't actually sound quite as good as DD/DTS.  Oppo is having to attempt to clock PCM at 48khz over HDMI, which de-clocks the signal anyways and sends a PCM block over multiple HDMI packets (which run at a completely different clock speed).  The clock timing gets all messed up.  If you use compressed DD/DTS, the AVM50 will un-wrap the data and then properly clock the decoded information at 48khz.
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