Trying to understand the importance/role of AV Receivers

[james_bond]

I wanted to know the answer to this question for a long time.

 

Almost all PC motherboards these days offer multichannel audio with no extra sound card needed.

 

You can buy a speaker like this one >>> Click here and connect the three 3.5mm jacks to the rear of a PC and you get surround sound.

 

Then why buy an expensive AV receiver ? I am just a newbie & know almost nothing about the subject so please educate me.

[BobVonBob]

An AV receiver is primarily for use with many input devices. Cable/satellite box, Blu-ray/DVD player, HTPC, console, streaming box, bluetooth, TV, etc. If you're only attaching a PC to your sound system and TV it's fine to attach it directly, although the audio hardware in it is much lower quality, but if you want 8 devices to play through the same speakers/TV an AV receiver is usually the best choice.

[Kisai]

34 minutes ago, james_bond said:

I wanted to know the answer to this question for a long time.

 

Almost all PC motherboards these days offer multichannel audio with no extra sound card needed.

 

You can buy a speaker like this one >>> Click here and connect the three 3.5mm jacks to the rear of a PC and you get surround sound.

 

Then why buy an expensive AV receiver ? I am just a newbie & know almost nothing about the subject so please educate me.

The surround processing is done in the receiver, as well as the speaker amplifier. Your PC is not going to output 1200w of audio. That speaker set you linked to only does 65w, which puts it roughly at the level of tinny speakers 2.1 systems found in small TV's.

 

In nearly every case, nobody uses the 6-channel analog output from the PC onboard audio because it's awful and noisy. An expensive surround receiver supports all the various theatre modes like Dolby Atmos, so they are really designed for Blueray, not so much Netflix, though you can sometimes get it with Netflix films.

 

Your more typical cable TV network (eg CBS, CBC, ABC, NBC, FOX, etc) doesn't broadcast in surround sound in the first place, with most shows being 2-channel stereo. Your PC can not do surround sound in software in most cases, you typically need to use a S/PDIF output to a surround receiver to actually get surround, and the software has to be told to send the audio directly to the S/PDIF and not be processed by the PC.

 

So in most cases, these small multi-channel speaker systems are designed for "second room" settings, like a bedroom. Not for the living room.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Some of the advantages are:

 

Better dacs than most boards have, so you can use the better quality audio from hdmi or simmilar.

 

Allows you to use your own speakers, which are normally much better than the ones in those premade systems.

 

Allows you to switch between devices, audio and visual.

 

Virtual surround sound/surround sound decoding, like dolby prologic and atmos.

 

 

[Stahlmann]

You use a receiver when you want to have multiple sources outputting audio or video to one display or speaker system.

 

For example plug in your receiver into a single TV and speaker system. And then plug your PC, consoles, etc. into your receiver.

[james_bond]

Got it. Thanks a lot. This forum is awesome.

[JZStudios]

58 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Your more typical cable TV network (eg CBS, CBC, ABC, NBC, FOX, etc) doesn't broadcast in surround sound in the first place, with most shows being 2-channel stereo.

 

Your PC can not do surround sound in software in most cases, you typically need to use a S/PDIF output to a surround receiver to actually get surround, and the software has to be told to send the audio directly to the S/PDIF and not be processed by the PC.

I'm pretty sure a bunch actually broadcast DD which is encrypted into a stereo format. Could be wrong, but we used to have a 6.1 setup in the living room and got a lot of surround sound, though that could've been mostly the movies.

 

When I was running a cheap logitech 2.1 and 5.1 for a total terrible 7.2 system it had surround sound in everything I tried. i.e. I never had any issues with anything. If there was an issue, it wasn't anything downloading a codec couldn't fix since that's all that's on AVRs doing the decoding anyways.

In any case, the "high end" Logitech 5.1 seems okay, but upgrading to an actual AVR is a definite improvement and now I can play my PS4 or whatever else with 5.1 as well.

[VoidX]

It's mostly down to what ecosystem you want to build. An AVR is typically a plug-and-play home theater, it just works, contains all features in low or mediocre quality, has integrated amplifiers, lots and lots of inputs, and is very easy to use. If you don't want to include a PC in your living room or theater, this is your only way (or a preprocessor + amplifiers, which is just an AVR in parts).

 

The pros and cons of HTPCs with sound cards and dedicated home theater equipment are basically the same as for PCs and consoles:

 

HTPC with sound card:

• Audio quality range: very bad to exceptional
• Only supports up to 8 channels, which is 7.1 for regular setups or 5.1.2 with hacks I make
• Supports every existing codec if you just update your player
• Ultra high resolution phase-perfect calibration
• Perfect delay and gain control for accurate spatial imaging
• Free (everyone has a PC), but your sound card might be very low quality, and amplifiers have to be bought for actual home theater speakers
• Not trivial to set up perfectly

Dedicated preprocessors (including AVRs):

• Audio quality range: mediocre to very good
• Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Barco Auro support up to 16 valid and 35 virtual channels
• Limited codec support, for example, Vorbis is rarely, Opus (the most advanced known compression) is never supported in the home theater ecosystem
• Very poor calibrators with phase distortions and little to no methods of manually fixing it
• Delay and gain control is only for fixing serious issues
• Very poor price/value ratio, which gets worse the more advanced equipment you buy
• Plug'n'play

The video differences are kind of the same story.