Lexicon MV-5; Any good?

out of curiosity anyone know what is under the hood of a MV-5? Given the latest discussion/raving/whatever of the new player with OPPO inside I wonder. If Lexicon did not have the time or bandwidth (expertise??) to do a player I would be surprised if they could do a AV receiver. In that case whats inside and see if you can buy that?

The only item in that price range $1,800 that is of slight interest to me is the Marantz Av8003. Here is the link
http://us.marantz.com/Products/2317.asp
I have not listened to the unit and tend to shy away from receiver makers. But this unit gives you all thru HDMI with room correction which may be of interest to you. The unit has some good reviews. The other alternative is to use the analog 5.1 or 7.1 outs of your Oppo to an older pre pro. That will depend on the quality fo your Oppo analog outs which I kinow nothing about since I have a Pioneer unit that was touted for their analog outs. Your Oppo must have many controls for the analog outs (delays, crossovers etc.) for this kind of set up since most quality manufacturers of prepro just pass the singal thru. You would directly connect the Hdmi video from your Oppo to your Elite which is my preference anyway. Have been looking at Classe' 300 and 600 along with Bel Canto but they are $2,300 to $3,00 used and Not in my current budget. I'm stuck in no man's land.

Good luck

Ctnick,

Thanks for the reply. Looks like I am leaning away from the Lexicon. For the price range (1500.00 - 1700.00) what would you recommend? I see Integra out there but don't know much about them. I also see some Theta used machines out there as well.

Ed

Looked into MV-5 myself. It only passes video at 1080i thru the processor. If your plasma is 1080p you could do the following: Get a hdmi splitter that will pass 1080p properly. Out of blue ray into splitter. One out of splitter to 1080p plasma and two out of splitter to MV5 for the audio only. Confirm with tech support but that is what they told me. The big item is the quality and capability of the splitter. I have seen the MV5 units here for $1,200 used. I decided not to go with it because the concern of quality of pure two channel redbook and was not sure about the ability of returning a splitter that did not work out and having a unit that would only pass 1080i and audio thru hdmi. Remember it does not decode the new audio codecs but passes multi channel pcm and I question if it will pass the multi channel pcm for the new DTS. Your Opp Blue Ray must be capable of decoding all the sound codecs. Here is the link for the MV5 manual http://www.lexicon.com/downloads/mv5/MV5_UG_07018137_rev0.pdf
Hope that helps.