ML 502 Media Console

[Captain Stereo]

Originally Posted by deacongreg

Its just unbelievable. Let us all trade in our Esoteric, high end gear, and buy receivers!!!

Don't get a premium quality audio component and instead get a cheap A/V receiver that has one feature of interest? So by that logic, a $500 receiver that decoded Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master AudioHD is better than my Classe stack of SSP-300/CA-5100 which is "limited" to playing back standard Dolby & DTS via digital bitstream? No, not by a long shot.

[wes]

Originally Posted by Captain Stereo

Don't get a premium quality audio component and instead get a cheap A/V receiver that has one feature of interest? So by that logic, a $500 receiver that decoded Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master AudioHD is better than my Classe stack of SSP-300/CA-5100 which is "limited" to playing back standard Dolby & DTS via digital bitstream? No, not by a long shot.

Well it might not be a bad idea, High end manufacturer should makesure they incorporate the latest features in addition to quality.

Any one Lexicon MC12HD!!

[Captain Stereo]

Originally Posted by wes

Well it might not be a bad idea, High end manufacturer should makesure they incorporate the latest features in addition to quality.

Any one Lexicon MC12HD!!

I completely understand that point of view. BUT...please keep in mind that the R&D for a high end component is exponentially longer than that for a commodity receiver. You can't just plop the latest chip in when your whole design is based around something different. High end manufacturers are relying on good dealers and common sense to tell people that high-end products minus a feature here and there are still wildly better than a cheap commodity using the latest whatever The new Classe SSP-800 will come out with HDMI 1.3a inputs/outputs, and full decoding of Dolby TrueHD & DTS Master AudioHD will be a feature added later via an update (again, because this feature was available late in the design cycle of the SSP-800).

Cheers..............Scott W.

[wes]

Originally Posted by Captain Stereo

I completely understand that point of view. BUT...please keep in mind that the R&D for a high end component is exponentially longer than that for a commodity receiver. You can't just plop the latest chip in when your whole design is based around something different. High end manufacturers are relying on good dealers and common sense to tell people that high-end products minus a feature here and there are still wildly better than a cheap commodity using the latest whatever The new Classe SSP-800 will come out with HDMI 1.3a inputs/outputs, and full decoding of Dolby TrueHD & DTS Master AudioHD will be a feature added later via an update (again, because this feature was available late in the design cycle of the SSP-800).

Cheers..............Scott W.

Understood, but they should also talk to consumers, all I hope is that the SSP-800 delivers and I will be happy to put my money down. I have B&W speakesr and Classé amps already and love the sound!

[pfslai]

I've talked to one of my dealers. Supposedly, those chips that enable the latest decoding and HDMI in/out are expensive and hard to come by. Smaller "high-end" companies just don't have the financial buying power at this point to compete with big multi-nationals.

There are a lot of people (including myself) who are very tempted to buy something like the new high-end denon processor now instead of waiting for high end companies, like classe, halcro or krell to incorporate all the latest features onto their machines. Btw, I use ML 423 and Krell TAS for power amps. That said, one of my dealers still claim the Anthem D2 and Krell S-1000, running analog inputs from the blu-ray players (ie. the player do the decoding) are sonically superior to the denon. They have so far refused to set up their main theatre room with the denon so that I can do a comparison.

[kennyt]

Originally Posted by Captain Stereo

Don't get a premium quality audio component and instead get a cheap A/V receiver that has one feature of interest? So by that logic, a $500 receiver that decoded Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master AudioHD is better than my Classe stack of SSP-300/CA-5100 which is "limited" to playing back standard Dolby & DTS via digital bitstream? No, not by a long shot.

I will be doing this comparison soon, but can say the difference between MC PCM and DD and DTS is huge, so once I redo the main rig with the Denon AVP I will let you all know.