have questions about 5.1 decoder

Hello everyone, great forum. I had a couple of questions someone could possibly help me with. Right now I just have a standard kenwood pro-logic system. I recently upgraded my tv to a 53" projection and my satelitte receiver to a hughes tivo with 5.1 capability. I now wish to get a new receiver that supports dolby 5.1 along with a new dvd. The thin I don;t understand is that some equipment appears to be 5.1 compatible but lacks a decoder. Is this correct? If I get a 5.1 stereo will I get the 5.1 surround from the sat box and dvd player. do they all need decoders? I would think as long as all of the equipment is 5.1 compatible it would work. the other thing is, when I listen to music CD's they appear to work in pro-logic with the voice coming out of the center channel, is this correct, and will that happen with 5.1 also.

Can anyone recomend a good budget minded 5.1 receiver.

One last question, my main speakers, rear speakers, and center channel speaker are different brands, will this hurt performance?

Thansk for any information, I appreciate it.

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Originally Posted by tncn

Hello everyone, great forum. I had a couple of questions someone could possibly help me with. Right now I just have a standard kenwood pro-logic system. I recently upgraded my tv to a 53" projection and my satelitte receiver to a hughes tivo with 5.1 capability. I now wish to get a new receiver that supports dolby 5.1 along with a new dvd. The thin I don;t understand is that some equipment appears to be 5.1 compatible but lacks a decoder. Is this correct? If I get a 5.1 stereo will I get the 5.1 surround from the sat box and dvd player. do they all need decoders? I would think as long as all of the equipment is 5.1 compatible it would work. the other thing is, when I listen to music CD's they appear to work in pro-logic with the voice coming out of the center channel, is this correct, and will that happen with 5.1 also.

Can anyone recomend a good budget minded 5.1 receiver.

One last question, my main speakers, rear speakers, and center channel speaker are different brands, will this hurt performance?

Thansk for any information, I appreciate it.

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Rest easy, young fella. You have no problem(s). Virtually ANY receiver you might buy today will have decoding on board for DolbyDigital 5.1 (or more) and probably DTS 5.1 (or more) also. Your DVD player and the satellite receiver will both output digital audio for the new receiver to decode. As far as what receiver to buy, I recommend Yamaha over all of the rest. In light of the fact that you stated that all of your speakers are different brands, I highly urge you to get one of the Yamaha models that sports the feature known as YPAO. That will make your differing speakers much less of a factor in overall performance than they'd otherwise be. The cheapest model with YPAO would be the RX-V650 (or an equivalent in the HTR series), which will probably cost you about $400 or so (maybe less).

If that's too much for your budget, I recommend that you live with what you have for the time being until your budget increases.

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Originally Posted by woodman

Rest easy, young fella. You have no problem(s). Virtually ANY receiver you might buy today will have decoding on board for DolbyDigital 5.1 (or more) and probably DTS 5.1 (or more) also. Your DVD player and the satellite receiver will both output digital audio for the new receiver to decode. As far as what receiver to buy, I recommend Yamaha over all of the rest. In light of the fact that you stated that all of your speakers are different brands, I highly urge you to get one of the Yamaha models that sports the feature known as YPAO. That will make your differing speakers much less of a factor in overall performance than they'd otherwise be. The cheapest model with YPAO would be the RX-V650 (or an equivalent in the HTR series), which will probably cost you about $400 or so (maybe less).

If that's too much for your budget, I recommend that you live with what you have for the time being until your budget increases.

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Thank you for the information, I appreciate it. What about music CD's, are they recorded in dolby pro logic or dolby 5.1?

Regular music CD's are recorded in 2.0 stereo. To me, playing them in Pro Logic or some other fake DSP mode is the worst thing you can possibly do. Some people seem to like it though.

If you want 5.1 music, you might want to invest in a DVD player that supports DVD-Audio and SACD. Of course then you'll need to get a receiver that has the 5.1 multi channel input as it won't work with the digital output.

is 2.0 stereo and pro-logic the same thing?