Classe SSP-800 - Time to move on?

pweg,

Yes, I agree, I've listened to several mid priced Processors and it surprises me the difference in sounds quality; particularly in musicality.   Cary, Bryston, Classe, McIntosh, Theta, just to name a few are very nice sounding.   Expensive, of course, but nice.

OP, I'm using the same Ayre preamp and amp as you with an Oppo 205 in a stereo setup with a 4K Sony XBR.  I always take HDMI-1 from Oppos directly to the monitor or projector.  In the stereo setup, I use analog from the 205 to the Ayre, and for SACDs it's pretty close to the Ayre C-5xeMP.

In a surround/HT setup, I use HDMI from a 105D to a Bryston SP3, with front LR passed through a Parasound JC 2 BP to JC 1 monoblocks.

BTW, I'm using an $50 4K HDMI switch from Monoprice to select between DirecTV and FireTV in the stereo setup, and it works well

db

You definitely have a similar set up to mine.   I recently bought a Ayre QX-5 and basically have the Oppo act as a digital player for the new DAC when I'm listening to music--have a solid state hard drive connected to the Oppo as well as stream Tidal.   Works really well.

Has anyone compared the sound of the Aurender A10 (XLR outs) to that of the CP-800? Flexibility issues aside (e.g. the A10 has only one digital input), which one would you prefer for 2ch listening? Is using the A10 only as a streamer (to the CP-800 via USB, for example) a waste of its DAC capabilities? Both units are similarly priced, but which one would you say is more `musical`? (Sorry, I know I am asking for very subjective information, but I would like to hear some opinions.)
Thanks.

So many choices in surround processors, but I think it's a good idea to bypass the processor for video...go direct from source to TV via HDMI due to all this HDR/4k/blah blah stuff.  With regards to room correction, boy, that's where stuff gets complicated.  Bryston doesn't even bother with it.  Anthem uses ARC, Krell uses ARES, Emotiva uses Dirac, NAD/Marantz/McIntosh(122) uses Audessey, Lyngdorf/McIntosh(160) uses Room Perfect...

I would argue that for a movie, audio quality isn't super important, right?  So regardless of how much processing "changes" the sound, the reality is, you just need the sound to work and be in the right spatially located area.  That means that ease of setup is probably the most important feature.  

I've used the AVM-60's ARC and Emotiva's Dirac (free and paid).  Personally, I think the SQ is all the same.  No big difference.  For me, at this point, for home theater, I want convenience and features at the right price.  I want a system that boots up quickly and is easy to set up.  My speaker/amp system uses RCA, so I don't really need balanced outputs.  I don't have more than 5 speakers so I don't care about Atmos X and whatnot.  I actually started with the AVM-60 but swapped it out (and saved a thousand bucks) by going with the emotiva XMC-1.  The only issue I have with it is the boot time.  I'm hard pressed to find a better processor with *some* room correction for a thousand, though.