Improving the Musicality of a Home Theather

+1 @thespeakerdude Buy the best LG OLED TV you can afford and you’ll be thrilled.  It also does high dynamic range (HDR) and when it’s available in the program material the picture totally pops — assuming you have the picture settings set right.  Also, if 2-channel is important, upgrade your streamer to something like Innuos, Lumin, or the best you can afford.  The Node is ok, but streamers are critical and moving up to the next level will make a big difference in your stereo performance. No idea about video streaming devices, but glad you’re enjoying your great new system.  

We have Apple TV, Chromecast, Firestick, and ROKU. The "SQ" of all of them is pretty much equivalent and is going to a factor more of what you plug them into. For movie/TV streaming, all the audio is compressed so any jitter on the HDMI is not relevant as it will be buffered and decompressed. The Firesticks are one of the few devices that support Amazon music HD. Not ideal. Bluesound does as well.

Like anything, you have to ensure your devices are up to date. Chromecast added Atmos support last spring. Firesticks added it in the summer. I think the AppleTV added it last spring as well. Disney+ was still having ATMOS support issues till fall of last year. The ROKU ultra I know supports it but it is not hooked up to a full system. The "ads" on the Firestick, other than an ad-bar on the bottom are much like what you get on Netflix home screen. You don't really notice them. The Chromecast and AppleTVs get by far the most use due to ease of interface. No one uses the remotes that comes with these, we all just use our phones.  Realistically, these devices are almost free <<$100, and dead simple to use so little reason not to have one.
 

Android boxes like the Zidoo are popular more with the computer savvy crowd. They tend to require more maintenance, and software can be buggy. We had another brand, but the software updates were infrequent and it eventually collected dust due superior ease of use of other devices. Zidoo has a Z1000 now that is getting better reviews, but more costly.

Wow, do t know where to start thanking you guys. Firstly, I thank Bruce and Mike at Audio Breakthroughs. My Proceed was going and I called 6 dealers in NY area when supply of gear was scarce. He had gotten his hands on two Anthems. I feel blessed if not lucky. A comment on my poor taste when I first entered this blog 14 months ago…..what I should have said was I loved the B&W’s but my acid test is female vocals like Stevie Nicks…and I took the Revels for mains for that reason. B&Ws are very fine speakers also, that’s why I used them in my partial surround…..

I will get Revels for the rears, good idea, and fill all the surround duty with B&W (more refined base than the Revels in my humble opinion).. My dealer also just recommended the Sony player recommendation given above, thanks for that…

the 4k OLED is next years project, we need a bigger home than the 1904 farm house… can’t wait.

Great job, thanks for sharing all your ideas and thoughts….

Ron

Great, FWIW I just got this blueray of Stevie Nicks Gold Tour, I think it was pretty good. Your Anthem AVM 70 has a feature to upmix surround sound with either the Dolby Sorround or DTS Neural X upmixer to take full advantge of your setup. Post if you have questions:

There are some settings you need to tweak in the Sony player.

see pg 24 in the manual

Set the BD Secondary audio to OFF (so you can bitstream out to your receiver/processor)

Turn DSEE HX ON (upsamples audio to hirez)