Home stereo question

I have a home stereo question, I think the gear heads here can help me with. I have a circa 2005 Pioneer VSX-515 audio receiver. Can I still get good surround sound with my newer Samsung 4K TV? Worth a shot.

Trackerxx wrote in post #18408138
I have a home stereo question, I think the gear heads here can help me with. I have a circa 2005 Pioneer VSX-515 audio receiver. Can I still get good surround sound with my newer Samsung 4K TV? Worth a shot.

I'll give the heretical response.

If you have good surround sound speakers (and assuming you have 5.1 or better surround sound), sure. If however your speakers really aren't up to the job, just have good stereo speakers with a good subwoofer. I had a Sony 5.1 surround sound speaker system (center, 4 satellites, subwoofer) that actually sucked. We recently replaced our 25" Phillips tube tv with a Samsung 4k UHD 65" curved screen tv. I like big jumps. I have a Sony 7.1 surround sound receiver and had the aforementioned Sony speakers. I also had some nice Klipsch speakers I used for music, using those with the subwoofer. Music sounded great! With the new tv, I dumped the center and satellite speakers, kept the Sony subwoofer, and use that with the Klipsch speakers, and the sound is fine.

Were I to go with real surround sound, I'd get a top end Bose system. Anything less in surround sound will sound good to you, but will sound like garbage to others. There are few situations where real 3D sound matters.

Good luck! Hope this helps.

Your VSX-505 is a 6.1 channel amplifier, it has a variety of surround decoding standards supported internally, wide frequency response and a healthy amount of power per channel.

So, YES, you could do a feed from your TV of a surround signal (e.g. Dolby, DTS) which is then decoded in the receiver, or feed the amp a decoded multi-channel output (LF, Center, RF, LSurround, RSurround, Woofer) into your receiver. Connected to quality speakers (and not the 3" things so common today with 6-8" 'subwoofer' (hah! that's a laugh) you can get fantastic sound!

Thanks guys! I just use the receiver as a stereo with two ordinary speakers. My Samsung 4K TV has an optical out. If nothing else I'll get a subwoofer to make my living room rock but also want to get surround sound. But having a good home stereo for cranking up the tunes (when wife/kids are out) is crucial.

mathogre wrote in post #18408148
I'll give the heretical response.

If you have good surround sound speakers (and assuming you have 5.1 or better surround sound), sure. If however your speakers really aren't up to the job, just have good stereo speakers with a good subwoofer. I had a Sony 5.1 surround sound speaker system (center, 4 satellites, subwoofer) that actually sucked. We recently replaced our 25" Phillips tube tv with a Samsung 4k UHD 65" curved screen tv. I like big jumps. I have a Sony 7.1 surround sound receiver and had the aforementioned Sony speakers. I also had some nice Klipsch speakers I used for music, using those with the subwoofer. Music sounded great! With the new tv, I dumped the center and satellite speakers, kept the Sony subwoofer, and use that with the Klipsch speakers, and the sound is fine.

Were I to go with real surround sound, I'd get a top end Bose system. Anything less in surround sound will sound good to you, but will sound like garbage to others. There are few situations where real 3D sound matters.

Good luck! Hope this helps.

Your Klipsch set-up is better than anything Bose has in the market. Anyone who knows anything about audio knows to stay away from Bose.

Trackerxx wrote in post #18408187
Thanks guys! I just use the receiver as a stereo with two ordinary speakers. My Samsung 4K TV has an optical out. If nothing else I'll get a subwoofer to make my living room rock but also want to get surround sound. But having a good home stereo for cranking up the tunes (when wife/kids are out) is crucial.

The thing about optical out is that it doesn't support the latest audio codecs. Back in my audiophile days I would have scoffed at this, but TBH, I don't think there's too much of a difference between the old Dolby DTS and the newer stuff (DTS-Master Audio, Atmos, etc etc). I mean sure you can hear a difference if you specifically turn on scenes with a lot of spacial audio effects and listen for them, but for most regular viewing you'd be hard pressed to tell a difference.

That said, I think an HDMI receiver is the way to go these days......if only for the sake of simplicity. You can grab one on the cheap in the used market these days!

Not a bad idea. I can move the older Pioneer to another room with an older TV. Or just simply use it as a stereo like the old days. Any suggestions on a new receiver that will do the job?

mystik610 wrote in post #18408339
Your Klipsch set-up is better than anything Bose has in the market. Anyone who knows anything about audio knows to stay away from Bose.

^
The hi-fi industry used to publish frequency response information for its products, and a half decade ago the industry went thru a lot of teeth gnashing to finally come up with a uniform standard about how to conduct the measurements and state the standards. Bose has NEVER complied, and NEVER pubished frequency response information...they rely on buyers to merely listen and determine what 'sounds good' at the moment -- disregarding faithful reproduction of what was recorded.

Here is the back of the receiver (Pioneer VSX-515). I never did use it for TV as intended. Now about a decade later, I can relegate it to my old Samsung TV in a spare room or try to make it work with my Samsung 4K TV but using optical in from the TV. It's a kick ass stand-alone stereo. I use Klipsch Heresy speakers. I'd like a subwoofer. As you can see I'm way more of an music guy than I am a TV sound guy.

Klipsch Heresy fronts, nice ...I compared those to ESS AMT-1B (heil air motion transformers) a very long time ago and ended up with the ESS, which I kept for about 2 decades before replacing...my wife wanted less physically obvious speakers to better integrate to furnishing changes .

The challenge for you, who appreciates acoutically accurate sound, will be to find sonically-similar (to the Heresy) Center and surround speakers, so as the maximize the transparency of sound (midtones and highs) as it moves about with the sound field. You might want to consult Klipsch to see what they recommend for additional speakers to supplement your existing speakers. Adding a subwoofer is a relatively simplistic task.

I found Polk bipole/dipole surround speakers worked well sonically with my ESS front speakers, and I even still use them today.

mathogre wrote in post #18408148
Were I to go with real surround sound, I'd get a top end Bose system. Anything less in surround sound will sound good to you, but will sound like garbage to others. There are few situations where real 3D sound matters.

I'd argue that there's no such thing as a top end Bose system. They're overpriced garbage. Maybe if you can come across the 901s (do they still make those?) you could argue it's worth something.

For the same money there are tons of better options, in fact, you'll get better for less.

To OP, your receiver won't be able to decode some of the newer formats, but that's not necessarily a big deal, you just can't listen to the latest and greatest audio formats some media will carry on them. In a lot of cases it'll just mean you'll revert to hearing the DTS audio instead of the DTS HD Master Audio for instance.

I myself will have to replace my receiver (newer than yours) as I want 4K passthrough by the end of the year.

mystik610 wrote in post #18408339
Your Klipsch set-up is better than anything Bose has in the market. Anyone who knows anything about audio knows to stay away from Bose.

Thank you. That actually answers a few questions for me. The Klipsch speakers I have are the 2.5 model that I bought back in 1994. With a subwoofer, the system sounds nice! When we bought the new tv, the place had a Bose sound bar that was over $1k, but it sounded like garbage. I'll say I'd been impressed with the high end Bose surround sound systems in a Bose store demo theater, but they were always so high in price that I simply never looked far enough into the quality.

Just find yourself a THX compliant set of speakers for the movies, and you can later decide whether or not the continue using the Heresy for music appreciation.

The Heresys are a little big but I've succeeded in hiding them from my wife. I've resisted Bose products. I've often wondered if any other slightly smaller product could sound as good as the Heresys. I have an old pair of Infinity VRS-4 but they might be a let down from my Heresys. Still they sound good in my office. After reading these responses I think it's time to go shopping.

Trackerxx wrote in post #18408526
The Heresys are a little big but I've succeeded in hiding them from my wife. I've resisted Bose products. I've often wondered if any other slightly smaller product could sound as good as the Heresys. I have an old pair of Infinity VRS-4 but they're going to be a let down. Still they sound good in my office. After reading these responses I think it's time to go shopping.

I wondered the same thing when my wife wanted me to downsize from the ESS AMT-1B's
I found a set of speakers from KEF with 5 satellites (and still using my two Polk dipole/dipoles and kept my Klipsch subwoofer) for 7.1. Fortunately I have never experienced regret at making the change from the ESS, and I found a nice home with an appreciative buyer for the ESS units.