Opinion on Adding Processor to skip buggy AVR HDMI


Hey Audiogon Community,

I bought an Arcam AVR360 earlier in the year, and I love the way it sounds. Unfortunately, its awesome audio performance is completely overshadowed two things:

1. Screen flickers / flaky HDMI
2. Video processor leaves weird screen artifacts (i.e., un-anti-aliased line art / fonts, or noisy MPEG decoding)

That said, I want to keep the amplification part of the amp because that part sounds amazing all the time, and is not buggy.

The AVR has analog RCA inputs on the back that I am hoping I can use to connect a processor to (skipping the AVR's internal processing and HDMI switching)

Does does sound like a crazy idea to anyone? Any red flags you see with doing this? Any suggestions on preamp/processors? I am looking at NAD and Marantz at the moment, and potentially Krell and Rotel.
unctonythetiger
I take the HDMI-1 output from my Oppo BDP-105 directly to the projector, thereby bypassing the processor. HDMI-2 goes to the processor for audio -- though you may not need a processor with the ability of the Oppo to do speaker management, etc. The Oppo has very good video processing, and an HDMI input I use for a DirecTV HD-DVR.

db
I would do one of two things.

Send the 360 in and have it repaired. (I assume you have swapped HDMI cables) If you purchased it new, it's under warranty. If not, I'm a dealer and can hook you up with an Arcam authorized repair center.

Run your video to your T.V or PJ and run the audio only to the 360. I'm actually using a 360 at the moment while my amp gets checked out and this is the way I'm using it.