Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm selling my Yamaha RX-V361 to MyFinger as it's lack of HDMI has finally annoyed me enough. I need a new amp in the £200-300 price range. I'm leaning towards the Onkyo 508 (£275) over the 309 (£200) as it has a fourth HDMI port (Sky, 360, PS3, one for expansion) and the setup mic routine thing (seems useful). The Sony 800 has vanished and the 810 is £300 but seems to offer nothing compelling over the cheaper Onkyo. I've not looked at Yamaha's offering yet.

Anyone want to chip in an opinion or some advice?

Craster you have claimed in the past that you have the 309 and it has a setup mic. This conflicts with a number of spec sheets and reviews I've read. Are you sure?

Nope, I have the 507, which I assume is an earlier rev of the 508.

I have now indirectly won the argument I was having with Grim via IM earlier.

Oh, and it's acebest. What was the argument?

/slings away upgrade plans

You nobber.

You said the 308 had audio setup, because you said you owned it.

viewtopic.php?p=434300#p434300 and the next post.

I win at typing faster.

So I did. That'll teach you to ask me which of 5 identical looking amps I own when I'm not sat in front of it.

You should get the 508, I hear Gaywood is thinking of getting one.

That one exactly, you said

Craster wins at being technically incorrect. The worse kind of incorrect.

It looked the same!

"Exactly"

It looked exactly the same!

*points and laughs*

Geek fail, Craster.

Gaywood, I wish to know which amp you eventually go for and whether or not it's any good. My Sony 800 blew up not long ago and I need something to replace it with.

Most of the users in this thread were later revealed to be sock puppets. Sorry.

It will almost certainly be the 508 and I won't really have much to compare it with, but I will still (of course) share my unfounded and half baked opinions.

I've decided that the Sony 1000-of-some-sort is more my sort of amp than the Onkyo 507-or-whatever-I'd-previously-decided-on.

Also my only reason for not having bought said Sony and whatever speakers it was I said I liked (Boston Soundworks XS?) is because of possibly moving to Japan, or at least in with MissN, who already has a 5.1 and I think three 5.1 systems is maybe a bit excessive for one household, so I'm waiting and seeing.

Also I may be quite drunk, hence talking about things that are only going to be jinxed by my talking about them.

I have recently purchased the Sony STRDH500 for much cheapness.

A few downsides (well, more than a few, but bare with me):

No sound through HDMI, you have to use optical cables. A pain, but once set up, not a problem
No onscreen display. Everything is configured through the front panel. Again, not a problem once set up.
Only does 5.1 and no hi-def audio, but meh. My ears can't tell the difference anyway

Upsides:
Much cheapness
It's does 5.1 *very* well.
Set up microphone included
The wife can use it (big plus)
5-year warranty was £10
It's practically disposable. When I get more money together, I can upgrade to something more ZOMGy.

No that I expect you'll even consider the cheapest amp on the market, of course

edit: I think Zardizzle has the roughly the same one.

Yeah, pretty much, mines the older version in silver. Had it for years now too with no problems.

No HDMI (wasn't around then) and only 1 optical input but it's fine for my needs.

I'm gonna stop you there. Looks cracking for £120 but I need more stuff.

Ordered the Onkyo 508. I looked for an end-of-line or refub 607 (one model older, one model up, about the same price) but I'm about a month too late -- I couldn't find any stock. Boo.

Just noticed that the Sony 810 is out... might go for that. I loved the 800 till it went bang.

DAMMIT

Heheh!

JC-Pwned

It was more an act of revenge.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5834&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=new+vegas

What speakers are you getting?

Hi5, JC!

Good choice. You'd have to be a complete wanker to buy the 309.

Not a good choice if you have a PS3, it seems.

Gngh.

Does you TV not have 3or 4 HDMI Doc then you can feed back into the amp?

That doesn't exist, Kov. Well, it does now with HDMI 1.4a and the Audio Return path, but kit with that option is only a few months old.

Oh,

I use my Samsung c450 home cinema.

All my hdmi go into the TV, and I output by TOSlink to the HC system and get 5.1 that way.

If I am making sense..

I'm surprised that works at all. Most TVs won't pass anything down the optical in that setup (my Samsung doesn't). In any event, they can't pass most of the Bluray audio formats through -- they literally don't fit down the limited bitrate that an optical TOSLINK offers. So the preferred approach is to cable all your HDMIs to the amp (carrying audio+video), then run one HDMI between the amp and the TV (carrying just video).

Oh right.. I have a Samsung TV (LE40A556 i think) and HT-C450 using anynet.. click the HT to D/IN function

The TOSlink has always worked even when doing blu-ray froma PS/2

My TV only passed through bare stereo if you can believe that. It even seems to strip out surround cues in stuff that has them. I was shocked and stunned.

That's how they normally work.
I'd imagine that's how Kov's one works, too.

Not really, as it does the 5.1 stuff.

But I could be wrong..

That's because most TVs pass out what they push to their internal speakers, rather than the input stream. As a cop to the content people.

The data simply doesn't fit down an optical cable. You'd need HDMI out.

I've never seen a TV do 5.1 out.

I'm not talking about HD audio, I'm talking about formats that TVs understand.

Er...

Like I said could be wrong

ie if my PS3 downmixes to DD5.1 to push over HDMI to my TV, my TV will then downmix to stereo for its stereo speakers. It puts the stereo rather than DD5.1 mix on the TOSLINK out. Well, probably - I've no idea what my TV actually does.

We're (probably) not talking about the same thing!

All I know, is that no sound comes out of my TV and all of it from teh 5.1 speakers... I will have a check later