Is lossless Dolby that much better than lossy?

[OhioGuy25]

I have a 15 year old Yamaha HTR 5150 http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/av-receivers-amps/htr/htr-5150_black__u/.

Will I notice a huge difference if I upgrade to a new receiver that does lossless?

 

[whoaru99]

With many things in audio, maybe. Depends on the rest of your system.

Personally, I would put it in the potentially noticeable but not "huge"category.

It may not even be necessary to upgrade receiver to get it. If the receiver has multichannel analog inputs all you'd need is a player with multichannel analog outs and built in decoding of those formats.

A better reason to update the receiver (than just for lossless) would be the convenience of HDMI, room correction, auto calibration, network/streaming capability, etc., etc.

 

[OhioGuy25]

With many things in audio, maybe. Depends on the rest of your system.

Personally, I would put it in the potentially noticeable but not "huge"category.

It may not even be necessary to upgrade receiver to get it. If the receiver has multichannel analog inputs all you'd need is a player with multichannel analog outs and built in decoding of those formats.

A better reason to update the receiver (than just for lossless) would be the convenience of HDMI, room correction, auto calibration, network/streaming capability, etc., etc.

Cool, thanks. I'll prob just focus on speakers then. I made another thread about speakers but I just realized I wasn't in the home theater section. What are the best speakers for surround sound that I can get at Best Buy? I get a good discount.

 

[runnin']

Hold up. With modern receivers comes other things that will make your life easier and your jaw drop, depending on your budget.

 

[Duane]

Hold up. With modern receivers comes other things that will make your life easier and your jaw drop, depending on your budget.

Like what?

 

[dewdude]

The first version of Dolby Digital that was used on LD and DVD and such...were 6 channels of audio comrpessed in to pretty low bitrates. I believe theater prints were limited to 320kbps, LD was 384kbps, and DVD was 448kbps max. That's six channels of audio in just under half a megabit of bandwidth. Blu-Ray is a bit better, with a Dolby Digital stream using 640kbps (DolbyDigital is also mandatory).

Dolby Digital is also limited to 48khz sampling rate and I believe 20-bits of resolution.

DolbyTrueHD on the other hand is a lossless codec. Up to 24 channels in 18mbit using 24/192 resolution. So, from a technical standpoint; yes, it's entirely better. But don't forget about DTS, which seems to be more available on Blu-Ray discs.

A couple hundred bucks will get you a decent AVR that will do both the new dolby and DTS formats; along with HDMI switching. My Onkyo for example has video processing, so all my Laserdiscs or non 1080p content gets bumped up to 1080p using a decent quality video processor; this makes even my 1080i video off cable look really good. Add progressive-frame recovery and 3:2 pulldown with 24-hz output mode, and holy geeze! It'll also play music over the network or a USB stick...and has a nice mobile app for controlling the unit.

Your hookups are gong to be MUCH easier; you'll have an HDMI cable going to your receiver, one to your TV; and that's all you'll really need.

 

[runnin']

Like what?

The upper tier room corrections, 9 or 11 channels of processing, blue tooth connectivity to play music off your phone, 3 or 4 rooms you can send music/movies to, wifi connectivity, amp assignment flexibility, and on and on the list goes.

For me the jaw dropping part was two fold. One, what Audyssey XT32 did to the sound, integration of the surround speakers(4 of them) and sub was simply amazing. Two, how good lousy little mp3's sound compared to before was also jaw dropping.