Post by andrei_nz November 23, 2013 (1 of 12)
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My brother has his eye on a NAD T787 receiver. He has a 5.1 system in a small man-cave, but his existing Pioneer receiver does not cut the mustard. As a result he does not need vast amounts of power. He tells me that audio quality is the priority. Is the NAD a good bet?
I know little about receivers as I am more a 2-channel man but unfortunately I am the 'go-to guru'. I have suggested he hang-fire until he looks at brands like Marantz and Anthem but that is a bit vague. He can get the NAD for the equivalent of $3,300 but his budget could go above that. Any suggestions?
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Post by fredblue November 24, 2013 (2 of 12)
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I've never had a receiver in the $3,000+ price bracket but here's my 2c's on mid-price receivers :-)
Marantz is definitely a brand to look at, Denon too.
FWIW, most models of Marantz receiver have an equivalent Denon, with different styling but nigh-on identical features & specification, as they're both from the same manufacturer.
I could not recommend a Sony receiver at this stage based on my own past experiences, the Sony I had was ok for movies (not great though) but absolutely lousy for multichannel music.
My old Denon was very capable, a bit feature light but much better than I expected for an approx $800 model. it had Audyssey MultEQ (Room calibration & equaliser) which personally did nothing for me (especially so with surround music) so I left it shut off most of the time but a lot of people swear by it.
My current Yamaha, equivalent to the $2,500 model now, is terrific, heavily laden with connections (8 x HDMI connections alone, 2 x HDMI out - 1 to drive TV/Monitor, the other to send signals to a Projector for instance, all HDMI's 3D/DSD/192k24bit/ARC capable) it's markedly better with music than movies, which is what I'm after. It has its own proprietary speaker setup and room EQ routine (called YPAO) which also has separate calibration for not one but two LFE channels/subwoofers, plus accounts for room reflections and so on. Its capable of driving 9 channels (7.1 plus 2 additional "Front Height" channels) and newer models can do 11 channels without external amplification, even more so with additional power amps. Oh and the newer models have AirPlay, 4k Video scaling and a whole host of other new goodies, if you were to go for one of their $4-5,000 models you'd be made. Plus the Yamaha is built like a tank and easier to use than the Denon, with nice intuitive GUI.
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+1 for Yamaha. I got my first Yamaha receiver recently and it sounds amazing compared to many others I've heard.
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Post by fredblue November 24, 2013 (4 of 12)
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Failed Muso said:
+1 for Yamaha. I got my first Yamaha receiver recently and it sounds amazing compared to many others I've heard.
Yeay! Thanks for the added vote of confidence, Rob!
I had a Yamaha AV Amp (no tuner so it wasn't a Receiver per se) years and years ago (daisy-chained within an inch of its life to external Dolby & DTS decoders, RF Laserdisc demodulators, DVD-A & SACD 6-channel analogue players and all sorts of gizmocombobulators! It was serious spaghetti junction round the back! I'm amazed it didn't go up in smoke, poor thing!) ..but for all its primitive connections, it was a real workhorse, it plodded on no matter what I threw at it! It was certainly better for movies than music, much better.. but it was so robust and resilient and capable, it just would not die!
once HD video and HDMI came along however, I was forced to finally upgrade the old girl.. so I went thru a load of other makes, never totally satisfied.. until I was persuaded by my brother to go back to Yamaha.. and now my replacement Yammy does everything the old one did but with a lot less cabling (and diminished fire hazard no doubt!) and it just does so much more than the old one or any of the others in between could ever do. it's vastly superior with music, more flexible/easier to use, greater connectivity, the list goes on. I'm a happy Yamaha bunny!
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Post by Iain November 24, 2013 (6 of 12)
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samayoeruorandajin said:
Denon 4520ci.
This!
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Post by Bobpaule November 24, 2013 (7 of 12)
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Yamahas are very good, kinda like the Honda/Acuras of receivers, as they hardly ever break down. Still made outside of a communist dictatorship by free motivated workers.
A notch above is Onkyo, these sound great and very detailed and musical. The flipside is you will need an array of 120mm cooling fans on top as they notoriously display HDMI board failure due to overheating from the amps.
Even in my separates system I still keep a fan over the Onkyo processor.
Please consider also the Marantz receivers.
So from an audiophile, get an Onkyo or a Marantz. FYI i have had every brand except Pioneer over the past 20 years.
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Post by steviev November 24, 2013 (8 of 12)
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I like my Yamaha, which puts out 120 watts per channel at 8 ohms and can drive 4-ohm speakers at 240 watts per channel (fronts only). If your friend has a small man cave, I have no idea why he needs a $3K receiver, though, which I imagine is over 200 watts per channel at 8 ohms -- that's practically a PA system. My man cave is 19x13x8 feet and I never use more than about 65% of my receiver's power. My ears give out long before the Yamaha does.
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Bobpaule said:
Yamahas are very good, kinda like the Honda/Acuras of receivers, as they hardly ever break down. Still made outside of a communist dictatorship by free motivated workers.
A notch above is Onkyo, these sound great and very detailed and musical. The flipside is you will need an array of 120mm cooling fans on top as they notoriously display HDMI board failure due to overheating from the amps.
Even in my separates system I still keep a fan over the Onkyo processor.
Please consider also the Marantz receivers.
So from an audiophile, get an Onkyo or a Marantz. FYI i have had every brand except Pioneer over the past 20 years.
Me too. And I say Denon over Onkyo.
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Post by gumby November 25, 2013 (10 of 12)
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andrei_nz said:
My brother has his eye on a NAD T787 receiver. He has a 5.1 system in a small man-cave, but his existing Pioneer receiver does not cut the mustard. As a result he does not need vast amounts of power. He tells me that audio quality is the priority. Is the NAD a good bet?
I know little about receivers as I am more a 2-channel man but unfortunately I am the 'go-to guru'. I have suggested he hang-fire until he looks at brands like Marantz and Anthem but that is a bit vague. He can get the NAD for the equivalent of $3,300 but his budget could go above that. Any suggestions?
I recently acquired on factory refurbished T787 at a very good price. This replaced the NAD T775 that I had been using for about 6 years now. I have not heard the other manufacturer's products but can offer the following list of attributes or features to think about. I am running 4 B&W 805's with this and a the B&W center channel that goes with the 805. It is essentially and 805 laid on its side. I have a REL 305 attached to the two main channels outputs of the amplifier. It sees the same voltage as the speakers and the crossover and volume are set manually by listening. It has its own 300 watt Class D amplifier.
1) With the NAD products you can assign the unused back channel amplifiers the main channel program and use this to passively bi-amp your speakers. The 805's were designed to be passively biamped, so I have done this.
2) The T775 had a 700 watt power supply and it would do 100 watts per channel continuously. the T787 will do 120 watts per channel. With the speakers effectively bi-amped, and only designed for 100 watts in the first place. These receivers both rule the 805's with an iron fist. I have played this so loud my wife wants to leave the house and it doesn't even break a sweat.
3) The T787 seems to run cooler and is quieter than the T775 was.
4) Both have the capability of distributed audio. I have two other zones in the house and feed the zone output to a 4 channel zone amplifier that handles these other speakers. The 787 has an Ethernet port, so the zones are all now neatly controlled (both source and volume) from an iPhone/iPad remote application.
5) The NAD receivers have an analog bypass function. You can bypass all the DSP functions of the receiver if you have high quality DAC's or other analog inputs. I generally prefer this.
6) The 7.1 inputs are analog bypass only. That is, you cannot do room equalization, etc with those. However, it does have some tone controls that I have been able to use to approximate the effects of the Audussey (sp?) room correction it performs on digital sources (if selected).
In shopping around, I have not found anything that has all these features at any price. It delivers the current to my speakers without a problem.
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