Next Gen, HDMI 1.3 Receivers Slow To Market – Do You Really Need Them?

[kennyt]

Originally Posted by deacongreg

Well kenny, a new player has entered the field. Very sexy looking and modern from a company we all have come to respect and love for years.

I can't believe a new pre/pro came out and I didn't hear about it! I am not really surprised that Marantz made the same switch as Denon into high end separates, the two companies share the same parent company and factories, though the Marantz is a little more stripped down than the Denon, well actually the Denon is so over feature packed, the Marantz is just for a simpler system, and at ~ 1/3 the price! Funny too, both are built into the companies receiver chassis... They don't give enough specs on it to tell all the differences, but 4:2 HDMI is a big weakness, and it is also a little soft on digital inputs, but when you add HDMI it does OK.

Well, add one more to the list....

[deacongreg]

yES, ADD ONE MORE FOR YOU. aT LEAST, THESE COMPANIES, iNTEGRA, dENON, Marantz, are trying to provide products we can all use. As we see with the Classe, more issues with the big boys.

[wes]

Originally Posted by xorbitman

To those thinking about the Classé Audio Pre-Pro....it's going to be longer than they expected. They are respinning the PCB's which generally means that the protos PCB's will be out by this summer. Once those protos PCB's are populated and then tested we are looking at another 2 - 3 months and then there will be a new version (semi-final) pre-production version of about 50 to 150 units depending on if they can get the components...and my guess is that there will be problems getting them....then again assembly, test and then ship....and if those initial field products are OK, then there will be a full production run. The production run will depend largly on the demand for the product.

This is from a reliable source....so don't hold your breath on this yet.

So this means that we might see it at Cedia 2008 or if that continues it will be CES 2009. Is this going the same route as the SSP-900!!!!

[CaliFan]

Possible new contender alert in the digital pre-pro arena:

Cary Audio’s upcoming Cinema 11a and Cinema 11v processors. Interesting take on the perceived deficiencies in HDMI audio from Cary. They split the incoming HDMI signal load into 2 separate processors: 1 to handle the video portion, the other handles the audio digital bitstream. Apparently current HDMI 1.3 signals cause degradation in the audio quality due to interference and jitter caused by the video signal.
Anyone heard about this?

I’ve read the reviews of the new pre-pros with the new codecs but so far none have mentioned whether 2-channel (CD) audio coming across the HDMI sounds as good as 2-channel audio coming across digital SPDIF or optical bitsteam. Anyone know?

Anyway I want to hear Cary Audio’s unit when it ships

[RebelMan]

Originally Posted by xorbitman

To those thinking about the Classé Audio Pre-Pro....it's going to be longer than they expected. They are respinning the PCB's which generally means that the protos PCB's will be out by this summer. Once those protos PCB's are populated and then tested we are looking at another 2 - 3 months and then there will be a new version (semi-final) pre-production version of about 50 to 150 units depending on if they can get the components...and my guess is that there will be problems getting them....then again assembly, test and then ship....and if those initial field products are OK, then there will be a full production run. The production run will depend largly on the demand for the product.

This is from a reliable source....so don't hold your breath on this yet.

This is COMPLETE MISINFORMATION. For the the official word on the subject of the SSP-800 you need to visit the Official SSP-800 Thread.

[fitzcaraldo215]

One feature that the Denon and Marantz prepros have that absolutely makes me scratch my head is the networking via Wi-Fi or whatever wire connection they are using. When we are struggling to get to pristine, high bandwidth, high rez 24-bit lossless 7.1 channel, do we need this relatively low bandwith capability for Ipods, internet radio, etc. ? I know I have no current or foreseeable use for it. If I want to listen to those low-fidelity sources, it makes no sense to do so through my expensive home theater system. It makes less sense that I have to pay for its' inclusion whether I want it or not. Am I missing something?