The vendor was nice enough to deliver! All was fine until I realized the bastard included a power cord. Like I need another in this house ...
Just purchased an Anthem AVM 50 to Frankenstein with my Luxman 507
I’ll be posting notes here about how this goes.
The overall goal was to add HT without breaking my 2 channel setup. It would have been nice to add full 4k HDMI switching but all those options which I liked were $2,500 or more. I got the AVM 50 for $650 + Tax.
90% of HT I watch is streaming, so audio quality is usually limited to DD+. I can output DD via optical from the TV and I can use the TV act as a 4K switcher. I can hook up my Oppo 103 directly to the 5.1 inputs. The AVM 50 will feed L&R to the Luxman amp directly, and all other channels go to 120 W Class D amps that have been collecting dust, plus my sub via XLRs.
Audio I can’t see any negatives, but there are a number of remote steps which need to happen.
For another $2K or so I could have gotten 4k switching (which apparently is unreliable in several brand of receivers) and saved myself step 1.
The overall goal was to add HT without breaking my 2 channel setup. It would have been nice to add full 4k HDMI switching but all those options which I liked were $2,500 or more. I got the AVM 50 for $650 + Tax.
90% of HT I watch is streaming, so audio quality is usually limited to DD+. I can output DD via optical from the TV and I can use the TV act as a 4K switcher. I can hook up my Oppo 103 directly to the 5.1 inputs. The AVM 50 will feed L&R to the Luxman amp directly, and all other channels go to 120 W Class D amps that have been collecting dust, plus my sub via XLRs.
Audio I can’t see any negatives, but there are a number of remote steps which need to happen.
- TV - Select source
- Luxman - Click ’separate’
- Anthem - Volume
For another $2K or so I could have gotten 4k switching (which apparently is unreliable in several brand of receivers) and saved myself step 1.
12 responses Add your response
I would use HDMI from the Oppo 103 to your Anthem AVM50 processor for movies That’s exactly how it’s working now. :) Will need to see how it handles the high res formats though. It has no problem with DVDs, but since the Oppo has BD audio decoding built in, but the Anthem doesn't, I'm in curious territory :) |
So, you're saying that your Anthem AVM50 does not decode DTS-HD Master Audio & Dolby True-HD found on bluray discs? The AVM50 can't be that old and I would think it would be able to support and decode those lossless HD audio formats on bluray discs. Even if it can't you can still use HDMI and set the HDMI configuration in your Oppo to output LPCM instead of bitstream for those bluray's lossless HD audio formats, so that way the Oppo will decode those DTS-HD MA & Dolby True-HD and sent them hi-rez LPCM via HDMI to your Anthem AVM-50. But for regular lossy Dolby Digital & DTS you can set the HDMI configuration in the Oppo back to bitstream. |
Hey Caphill, Per the comparison chart here: https://www.anthemav.com/downloads/avm50_ComparisonChart.pdf Anthem did not support DTS Master or DD TrueHD until the next model, the 50v. :)
That's' the whole point. :) Best, E |
Sorry didn’t read the whole thing. My bad. No worries. So far when playing BD marked with DTS Master the Anthem is switching to DTS automatically. Apparently this is a feature of DTS. You get as much as your processor can handle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD_Master_Audio I’ll experiment to see if I can get the Oppo to automatically switch to multi-channel LPCM instead. If not, there’s always the analog outputs. :) |
Erik, you may want to just try using the lossy form of DD/DTS. It may actually come out better than 7 channel LPCM over HDMI. I have tried LPCM on my system and it works, but it doesn't actually sound quite as good as DD/DTS. Oppo is having to attempt to clock PCM at 48khz over HDMI, which de-clocks the signal anyways and sends a PCM block over multiple HDMI packets (which run at a completely different clock speed). The clock timing gets all messed up. If you use compressed DD/DTS, the AVM50 will un-wrap the data and then properly clock the decoded information at 48khz. |
If you configure the Oppo to output LPCM instead of bitstream via HDMI, your processor should recognize it as LPCM digital, not DTS or Dolby Digital. Cause the Oppo is sending LPCM stream to your processor and likewise your processor will recognize them as LPCM digital. If you set the Oppo to output bitstream via HDMI then your processor will recognize it as either DTS or Dolby Digital and since your Anthem AVM50 doesn't decode or support DTS HD MA & Dolby True-HD then your AVM50 would probably downgrade them to their lossy counterparts (DD or DTS) if you set the Oppo to output bitstream via HDMI. |