Receiver? Which one to buy?

Question

I am looking for a receiver for my 5.1 system. I also want (B) zone 2 for a set of ceiling speakers in another room. I do NOT want zone to in analog. That slight delay drives me nuts!
I want to be able to play BOTH sources at the same time, without any delay.

Any suggestions? My budget is between $500-$800
Looks like Yamaha just came of with a few new receivers.

Answer 1

Your writing skills could use some work. Your question and concerns are difficult to understand.



The multi-zone receivers that exist support 5.1 for zone 1, but stereo for zone 2. This is because it makes zero sense to to have movie or HDTV sound tracks playing in a separate room from the television.



The higher end receivers have amps/speaker wire connections for zone 2. Lower end receivers have line-level RCA jacks for zone 2.



And all the zones are analog.



Your time delay problem is because of distance to the next room, not because the signals are analog. At sea level sound travels about 1.1 feet per milisecond.



If you are standing in the first room and the speakers are ... 5 feet from you. But the same sound is coming from speakers in the next room about 20 feet away - the difference in distance for the air to move will be about 14 miliseconds.



The human ear can start to detect an echo/delay at about 12 miliseconds.



Basically - you are always going to get a delay from speakers in the next room if you are trying to play the same sound in two different rooms unless you are standing equal distance between the speakers.

Answer 2

To simplify, nothing gets PLAYED in digital, Stuff gets STORED in digital. Sound is CONVERTED to numbers, like secret code, for purposes of digital (BIT AND BYTE) storage on hard disks , tape, Chips, so on, because it takes up less room and In case of analog, signals, your dont run out of Band width or bias,on the media, because you dont store any dynamic signals- just numbers. These numbers are converted BACK into sound (which IS analog, every bit of it) to feed to your speakers. CONVERSION back and forth, (Coding / Decoding) takes time to do, which causes delay. Not the transferring of analog signals on a wire, which takes place at the speed of electricity. Once the receivers secret decoder ring (the DAC) makes it back into music, all you have to do is forward it to the speakers with a wire ( or bundle of wires.) you can do this with any amp by using an A/B switch or patchboard, or by using the preamp output to connect to a secondary Amplifier, then on to your second set of speakers. IF you think you are going to run TEN speakers (two 5.1 systems) off of one Home amplifier simultaneously, you are badly misinformed there as well. Single receivers do not have the power to do that safely. You can distribute the preamp output signal (Which is already analog - amplifying a string of numbers gains you nothing) to two different amps, each powering one set, or use a professional distribution amp of the proper type (expensive). These kinds of hookups are best left to professional installers who know what they are doing and what is needed, and can do the math required. Such systems are not the toaster in a box that a home receiver is, at all.

Answer 3

Look into the Yamaha line of AV receivers, as they have addressed this issue.



The problem you are running into is honestly one I had not heard of before until doing research. This is a very common problem with nearly all of the newest receivers on the market. Some people have done a workaround by using the 7 channel stereo option, with the rears being the second zone - but that does not give you the option of two sources should someone wish to view a video in one room and listen to radio in another. It does fix the delay issue however.



Yamaha receivers have a feature known as "Party Mode" that is said to prevent this from happening. They know of the problem when a digital feed is used for zone one and have taken steps to prevent this from happening. That is the actual cause - zone one is digitally processed and thus has a delay, but zone two bypasses the digital processing and actually plays a fraction of a second ahead of zone one.

Answer 4

All musical sound is analog??? Speaker wire is analog??? Speakers are analog.... Do you have a receiver or amplifier in the other room that you want to feet a digital signal to??? How are you powering the ceiling speakers??? Optical is only good out to about 25 feet HDMI is only good out to about 30 feet...you can add a booster amp but doing so can cause delay in the signal and you could get some Latency....Take a look at Latency study it and how its produced and maybe you can figure a way around it...some receivers have a delay feature built in where you can try and match the delay for both systems....I know that Denon has that feature and probably the Yamaha higher end machines do to....I'm not sure how you want to do this...do you just want to run speaker wire to the other room to power the ceiling speakers or are you talking about sending a digital audio signal out over an optical line and then having a DAC processor with amp in the other room decipher it.....AV receivers have a DAC (Digital Analog Converter)that produces sound ceiling speakers do not usually carry a DAC or an amp so you need a processor box to do that Wireless speakers usually transmit a radio wave and work very similar to the way an FM radio works again not digital...even if you transmit a digital signal...you would be dealing with two DAC's one in the receiver and the other at the speaker end and they may not process at exactly the same speed....Latency between digital and analog is actually because Digital takes longer to process that analog.......Analog is actually faster than digital....