5.1ch Dolby Atmos Receiver Worth It?

[Ginger Penguin]

Hi all,

 

I currently have a 5.1 setup from Yamaha that was very basic but I'm honestly very happy with it for the most part. I've been wanting to swap out the receiver for a while, though. Mostly the lack of Dolby Vision passthrough has been the gripe but it's felt silly to spend 2-5x as much as I spent on the whole system to get a receiver with all the bells and whistles I might want in the future like a bunch of extra channels for height etc. I saw that a Pioneer VSX-394 receiver is on sale here for under $500AUD. It supports Dolby Vision, Atmos and DTS:X, has Bluetooth so I'd be able to play music using my home theatre easily which I'd love. It also seems to support that room analysis thing I've seen many YouTube videos do which my Yamaha one certainly doesn't. The only feature it's lacking that I could see myself using in the near future is HDMI 2.1 if I wanted to hook up my PC to it to do some couch gaming but I'd need a PC upgrade for that anyway (only HDMI 2.0 on my 2080 Super) so probably not a big deal given we're hitting the $1000 mark at least for that.

 

Would I be getting any benefit from this new receiver in the audio department just by having it able to decode Atmos and DTS:X even though I'm only going to be using it with a 5.1 system? It says it supports Dolby Atmos Height Virtualizer & DTS Virtual:X as well. While I've always been wary of those kinds of upmixing-type marketing technologies, maybe they would actually be a benefit? Or, given that I'm planning on renting for at least the next 2 years so wouldn't be able to put in proper height speakers until 2026 at the earliest, should I just keep what I've got until then and upgrade to the fully-featured unit rather than going through this middle step?

 

Thanks in advance for the advice!

[BuzzingBee]

IMO if you aren't getting height speakers then it's not worth getting AVR with Atmos.

[MarkPol88]

I second what BuzzingBee said - changing AVR because of Atmos compability and not using proper height speakers is meaningless. Especially as prices started to come down finally, so in two tears you might be able to buy something much more powerful for the same money.

 

@Ginger PenguinWrite something more about your setup - you mentioned lack of Dolby Vision, maybe you can bypass AVR with video and sent to it audio only? Splitters and audio extractors exist mainly to help with situations like this.

[Omon_Ra]

On 12/30/2023 at 2:24 PM, MarkPol88 said:

I second what BuzzingBee said - changing AVR because of Atmos compability and not using proper height speakers is meaningless. Especially as prices started to come down finally, so in two tears you might be able to buy something much more powerful for the same money.

 

@Ginger PenguinWrite something more about your setup - you mentioned lack of Dolby Vision, maybe you can bypass AVR with video and sent to it audio only? Splitters and audio extractors exist mainly to help with situations like this.

You could also run whatever device that is outputting Dolby Vision straight to display, and route audio back to AVR via ARC. Also, I'm assuming your TV supports Dolby Vision? If it doesn't...it's kind of a moot point. Which Yamaha receiver do you have now? Most any of them within the last 7 or so years have MusicCast (IMO the best AVR app out there) and/or Bluetooth.