by Amazon.com Once used mainly as a means for enjoying radio and records, the home receiver is now your gateway to the exciting world of home theater. With an audio-video surround receiver you'll have everything you need to take in movies and music in spacious surround sound, all in the comfort of your living room. Start building your home theater system with a quality AV receiver-we'll show you how to find the best one for your needs.
Overview When Avery Fisher (for whom the famous Lincoln Center concert hall is named) popularized the receiver back in the early 1960s--building a pre-amplifier, phono section, tuner, and a stereo amplifier onto a single compact chassis--it was an almost impossible task. Receivers then were powered by vacuum tubes that created tremendous heat and required bulky and extremely heavy output transformers. It was worth the effort, though: the receiver brought high-fidelity sound capabilities to the average music lover. The single-chassis design eliminated the stack of separate, expensive, and hard-to-connect boxes that had kept high-fidelity music a relatively small, pricey hobby through the 1950s. The modern audio-video (AV) receiver offers a level of complexity and sophistication audio pioneers can only have dreamed of, yet it performs the same consolidating role as early tube-driven designs. While separate pre-amps, processors, and amplifiers are still the preferred building blocks for serious hobbyists, the vast majority of enthusiasts will base their home theater and stereo systems on an all-in-one AV receiver. The single, sometimes not-so-compact receiver chassis contains the preamplifier (input electronics, volume, tone, and audio and video source switching), a built-in AM/FM tuner, often a phono section, surround-sound processing (including "bass management" facilities), and of course between five and eight channels of amplification. Receivers vary widely in price and sound quality-and their somewhat technical feature set can be hard to understand for users setting up a home theater for the first time. Our guide will help you understand the most important measures of a receiver's performance and the features you should examine before buying.
Surround sound: Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital
The introduction of DVD has seen state-of-the-art, movie-theater-quality 5.1-channel Dolby Digital leap to the fore as the surround-sound standard. With five channels of discrete, full-frequency sound plus a low frequency effects channel (the ".1"), Dolby Digital--formerly called AC-3--has revolutionized home-theater sound. If you never plan to upgrade from VHS tape to DVD, a Pro Logic receiver will suffice. Even if you buy a DVD player at some point in the future, your Pro Logic receiver won't be obsolete--DVD players can synthesize a Pro Logic signal that mimics a surround soundtrack. Sooner or later, however, every home-theater owner will probably want Dolby Digital's improved 5.1-channel surround sound. So, at the very least, we recommend a "Dolby Digital-ready" receiver, which accepts a decoded Dolby Digital signal via analog inputs. This decoded Dolby Digital analog signal may originate from either a DVD player equipped with a built-in processor or from a dedicated outboard surround decoder--the quality of the digital and analog components in such a system are far more important than where the Dolby Digital signal gets decoded. If your budget allows, however, your best bet is to buy a full Dolby-Digital-decoding receiver.
Surround sound: DTS
Digital signal processing While Dolby Digital, DTS, and DSP surround processing all occur in the digital domain, the final sound output must come from your analog speakers. Receivers use a multi-channel digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to create the final analog signal passed on to your speakers. These DACs vary greatly in sound quality--when we review an AV receiver, we'll take careful note of the quality of the final sound.
Inputs To get the most from the DVD format, make sure your television or projector is equipped with an S-Video input jack, which accepts the black-and-white and color elements of the picture separately. Most AV receivers include S-Video switching and multiple S-Video inputs and outputs so you can conveniently switch between other S-Video sources like DBS satellite and Hi-8 camcorders. While it's ideal to have an AV receiver with S-Video switching, there are outstanding budget receivers on the market that are not S-Video capable. Instead, some manufacturers have chosen to put the money elsewhere, such as into higher-quality digital-to-analog converters (DACs) or more powerful amplifiers; their reasoning is that you can always connect the S-Video output of your DVD player to your monitor directly and bypass the receiver's video switching facilities altogether. If your future plans include a TV or projector with component-video inputs (which break the picture down even further than S-Video for improved video quality), look for a receiver offering component-video switching. If you frequently use your camcorder with your home theater setup, be sure your receiver includes a set of convenient front-panel AV jacks. If you max out on video sources, outboard video source selectors can also come in handy.
Outputs Because most home-theater speaker systems consist of five limited-frequency-range satellites and a subwoofer, we recommend buying an AV receiver with a flexible bass management system that permits you to direct low frequencies (anywhere from 180 Hz on down) from the five main channels to the subwoofer. This enables both the receiver and your speakers to perform more efficiently. If you're building a home-theater system around two existing full-range stereo speakers, you can leave those "full range" while directing bass from the other three channels to the subwoofer.
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