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Home Theater Bypass , why am I hearing this now.

I have a Home Theater and when I upgraded my Onkyo to a Marantz it was a true Upgrade I was impressed, anyway like any other hobby I wanted to make improvements on top of what I just gained. The more I read the more I realize AVR HT receivers will never get you a tru HIFI experience because of the processing that takes place and a dedicated 2 ch is the only way to go ask Millercarbon he will surly be all over this one. I only have one room in my house that doubles as a home theater and listening room. I was ready to pick up a Prisma NP5 streamer (to move to my rack and network ) and a Denafrips ares Dac thinking I would get an upgrade to my source that is Tidal over my phone over the air currently( anything is better than this method). Im wondering if its a waste of time and money since I plan on using it with my AVR, then I stumbled onto guys talking about HT bypass for this reason. I haven't read or herd HT bypass yet on this Forum and wanted to know what you all thought, at some point i wanted to get a 8k marantz Processor and dedicated Amp but before I drop $7k I want to make sure I figure out this HT bypass because I want better High Rez audio from my HT system. 
ngiordano
erik_squires
16,056 posts
 

My experience has been that there is a really broad difference in sound quality between processors, and I encourage listeners to keep both an open but skeptical mind about them.

Onkyo and Marantz are not my favorites. Onkyo worse by a lot, Marantz bright and hard. Emotiva same as Onkyo but haven’t listened in forever.

The current generation of Anthem does OK, but my very old Theta Casanova, which was a pure digital preamp, would still beat all of them for sound quality. Honestly even my low end Oppo BD player sounded great compared to most modern processors.  Shame I had to use a 6 channel preamp to hear it. 

secretguy
1,703 posts
 

Thread is a year and a help old.

And i've never heard Marantz described as bright and hard.

flrun's avatar
flrun
92 posts
 

I own a Marantz pre and Emotiva amps and nothing is bright and hard.

erik_squires
16,056 posts
 

@flrun

 Was talking about the processors, not the amps.  And some people love the Marantz HT processors and we'll just have to disagree.

flrun's avatar
flrun
92 posts
 

For what they have done with the 8805 audio wise considering everything that is crammed in there for home theater is impressive. The dealer I bought from actually had design input and worked with the team developing it, he told me how they did everything they could to get the best audio out of it.

One of these days I will get a dedicated 2 channel but until then I am happy with the 8805 sound. If anything it is not quite bright enough but that could be due to alot of things.

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