Purchase a receiver or what? need your advice.

@auxinput

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the AV8805. Did you test it for surround movies (home theater)? I don’t like Audyssey in the Marantz and would prefer ARC2 way better IMO. Even the latest NAD av products no longer use Audyssey, they now use Dirac, which is superior to the Audyssey. Room Perfect is another top notch room correction calibration.

In my dedicated home theater room I’m now using the Lyngdorf MP-50 av processor which uses Room Perfect and its RP implementation is extraordinary. With Room Perfect properly calibrated the surround sound experiences from movies takes to a whole new level in comparison to the Classe SSP 800 that I previously had in my dedicated home theater room.
The RP in the Lyngdorf MP-50 makes huge difference for surround sound home theater application.
Not to mention that the SSP 800 cannot support Dolby Atmos, DTS-X & Auro 3D. Now with the Lyngdorf MP-50 my setup is 7.2.4 with 4 overhead height ceiling speakers for Atmos setup. 

On the video side of thing, I run the video from my Oppo 205 directly to my 4K display using video only HDMI out of the Oppo 205 and run the audio to my AV processor using the audio only HDMI out of the Oppo 205. The Oppo 205 is my only AV video source in my dedicated theater room. I did the same when I was still using the Classe SSP 800.

@caphill - hopefully you are still monitoring this thread.  I tested the AV8805 in my system using the beginning part of a movie that had excellent music in the intro and very high quality audio and video.  And yes, it did have excellent surround elements in the beginning of the movie.  We did not do an Audessey calibration - it was completely turned off.

----
Regarding a second topic, I have tried room correction and I do not like that at all.  I had the opportunity to do a Dirac room correction in my own theater and I could never get it to sound right.  Dirac is so horrendessly intrusive on changing and tweaking the sound that it creates problems in my opinion.  The Dirac processing did weird things to the phasing of the sound and made all sounds seem like they were in your head (like listening to headphones) instead of way out in front of you like the movie ambience is supposed to be.  I could dial this down, but it never sounded good.  It also tweaked the frequency response and sometimes seemed to make things too smooth - I lost resolution and microdetail in the sound/tones/textures.  Also, if aggressively used in bass, it caused subwoofers to peak and push to much at bass null frequencies.  Sorry, but Dirac is not for me.

---
I think I tried YPAO Yamaha auto-correction.  That did not work well either.  In both cases, things just sounded better and more natural with any sort of automatic room correction turned off.  I do a lot of room acoustic treatments and I use careful equipment matching and fuses to control timber and response of the equipment.  That works significantly better than any sort of room correction.
----
Actually, at RMAF there was a room that really touted "room correction".  I listened for just a bit, and it sounded nice and balanced, but I could not understand what the big deal was, lol.  Many other rooms sounded nice and balanced.  This "room correction" room actually sounded rather flat and sterile, most likely because it was using an external/outboard room correction device and signal goes through A/D and D/A stages - which lose all the voicing and "singing" of the preamp/processor.

@auxinput

Nicely put. I personally did not like auto room correction until recently when I was auditioning or demoing a new processor to replace my outdated Classe SSP 800.

I demoed both Datasat RS20i and Audio Control Maestro both have Dirac Live. I also had a chance to demo the Anthem AVM60 with its proprietary ARC2, the McIntosh MX160, Trinnov Altitude 18 and the Lyngdorf MP-50 all have Room Perfect. I ended up getting the Lyngdorf MP-50. The McIntosh MX160 & Lyngdorf MP-50 are pretty much very similar except the MX160 has analog audio inputs and the Lyngdorf MP-50 does not. I do not need analog audio inputs on my AV processor as it’s used strictly for surround sound (home theater). I’m only using HDMI input on my AV processor connected from the Oppo 205, which is my only AV source in my dedicated home theater room.

Anyways, my HT room is very well treated and was purposely built from scratch for that purpose. As you know that I’d been using the SSP 800 with no auto room correction for over 7 yrs with great results. I only used the Classe’s manual PEQ sparingly.

IMO, when properly calibrated using RP my new Lyngdorf MP-50 blew away the SSP 800 in clarity, resolution and the steering of the surround sound. Not to mention when playing Dolby Atmos & DTS-X materials from 4k UHD bluray discs off my Oppo 205, which the SSP 800 simply cannot support those formats. 

However, when RP was turned off basic sound quality of the Lyngdorf is still very good and I would say was quite on par with the SSP 800 with the Classe slightly wins over the Lyngdorf MP-50. I think the SSP 800 had more balanced sound across the boards with just the right amount of bites. Perhaps the SSP 800 had better synergy with the rest of my associated gears and speakers which consist of all Classe Delta series class AB amplifiers and all B&W 800 D3 speaker system, and therefore the SSP 800 is a better match for them? Highly possible.

Although I would never use my AV processor for stereo listening to music only sources but recently I briefly tested the Lyngdorf MP-50 stereo performance with RP turned off just for kicks. It was still decent in that regard and was quite on par with the stereo performance of the SSP 800 with the Classe slightly edges out the Lyngdorf. Again maybe it was due to better overall system synergy.

Auxinput, just wondering what power amps and speakers do you have in your dedicated home theater room? Do you also have the Oppo 205 or 105 as an AV source player?

I would never have any sort of room correction device in my dedicated two-channel listening room, which is also very well treated.

As a preface for this system description, for all wiring (power cord, interconnect, speaker cable) I use some variation of solid-core OCC copper conductors and everything has Furutech rhodium plated connectors. Even use Furutech GTX/NCF rhodium outlets.
---
If I had to describe my acoustic room treatments, I would have to end it with "a partridge in a pair tree", lol.
---
I have the B&W 805 D3 for left/right and HTM2 D3 for center. For surrounds, I’m still using some older Focal Cobalt speakers (one of the things on my list for future upgrade, lol). I use an Oppo 103 for transport and it does have an upgraded linear power supply. I also have an external linear power supply that powers both my DirecTV receiver and my Lumagen Radiance video processor - I wrote a thread on "Musings on Switching Power Supplies" that you can read if you want. Everything going to a Sony VW95ES projector (which was the best 1080p project that was produced, in my opinion).
---
I used to run all Emotiva XPR-1 monoblocks for my front stage (including subwoofers) and XPA-1L monoblocks for surrounds - all amps fully loaded with Furutech rhodium fuses. Over the summer, I finally upgraded to Parasound JC1 for left/right and an A21 for surrounds. I have been able to remove the warm Parasound sonic signature by a careful combination of Furutech and Hi-Fi- Tuning Supreme fuses. I had originally put in all Futurech fuses, but I found that it was still too warm and my Emotiva amps actually had more resolution and clarity!! wow. Installing 1-3 Hi-Fi Tuning silver fuses increased the resolution of the Parasound amps. The B&W D3 really need an extremely high resolution amp to sing.

----
I just installed a Hi-Fi Tuning into the JC1 main fuse on Wednesday and it’s still burning in, but it sounds promising. It’s at that point where the burn-in has a slightly warm/veiled sound - the edge has just a very slight bit of dull on it, but it should open up within a week. On my Focal surrounds, I found I had to pull the silver fuse and go back to all Furutech because of that Focal titanium dome tweeter breaking up and the speed of the Focal woofer just didn’t give enough body. I know this speaker is a problem, but it’s on the list someday.
----
I still have Emotiva XPR-1 for center and subwoofers (two subs that have a 12" driver in a huge vented cabinet that I built - about the size of an huge SVS subwoofer and weighs about 200lbs). I have a final JC1 on the way to replace the center channel. I will then take that "free" XPR-1 and re-cap it to use as a final subwoofer amp. This is actually the best amp I have ever heard for subwoofer duty - extreme amounts of current and power and full linear power supply - 1800 watts at 4 ohm, I cannot actually use more than 60% of this amp or the subwoofer drivers will peak out!! lol.

---
I tried a set of Bryston 7b3 monoblocks in my system and found that they just did not work well. The Bryston was just about the highest resolution amp, but it’s so close to Class B (an extremely low bias Class AB) that it’s just too fast with no decay - the sound was there and gone before I could really hear it and it had no body - It actually could not even keep up with my Emotiva amps in body and volume. I think the Bryston would work well with a very warm preamp and lot’s of gold-plated connectors on wiring. This helped me because the Bryston 28b was one of the amps I was considering instead of re-capping one of my XPR-1 amps.