[hedora]

I don’t understand what an A/V receiver is for. Our setup:

- An old LCD TV with 4(?) HDMI inputs and a few legacy ports.

- linux box with hdmi out

- apple tv with hdmi out

- console with hdmi out

- line out cable from TV to 1970’s receiver’s line in.

- line out from sonos to another line in on the receiver.

- roof antenna, with a Y to the TV and receiver

- turntable

- two extremely nice speakers

(Before someone asks, the TV has some sort of multichannel digital audio out. I don’t care. If I did, that’d give me surround sound. Similarly, I could get a subwoofer if I wanted.)

This is completely fine. The apple tv and console auto-switch the tv to their output, and sync the power buttons. The linux box doesn’t, but probably could if I decided to RTFM. The apple tv can be controlled with the tv remote, but its native remote is nicer. We only use the TV remote to access linux.

We only touch the receiver to switch between TV, turntable, sonos and radio.

How would an A/V receiver possibly improve this? (Note: I want the analog radio and record player with their nice mechanical switches and warm FM sound, and will run the sonos s1 app until the cloud side of it dies.)

[alabastervlog]

It’s mainly useful for getting good surround. If you don’t care about that, sure, not really necessary. That’s like the whole point of it.

Side benefits include:

- Adding more ports to often port-starved TVs or projectors.

- Providing alternative port-switching interface if you hate your TV’s UI and want something simpler.

- An organizational aid—you can put all your stuff somewhere away from the TV, and all that needs to reach it is a single HDMI cable. This can create interesting room layout options that are otherwise impractical.

All of these can also be accomplished by a simple HDMI port switch, but still, it’s handy.

[hedora]

We just ran a wider conduit through the wall It has 4 hdmi cables, a usb extension cord and tv coax in it. (Didn’t bother with Ethernet the closet has a wifi access point in it.)

The appletv is in the closet, but the other devices don’t make sense there. The linux box is about as big as a decent USB hub, and has a few wired game controllers plugged into it. The console is a switch, and going into the closet is too much trouble. I could put the sonos in the closet, but the play/mute button on it is too convenient when I don’t have a phone handy. The other stuff is self explanatory.

Can you not get a surround sound audio receiver/amp anymore? The digital out on the tv presumably would feed it. I had an old one like that, but it died.

[toast0]

> Can you not get a surround sound audio receiver/amp anymore?

No, not really. If you want surround sound audio, you probably want it over HDMI, and then they may as well have video features too.

But, if you have enough ports on your TV, and it doesn't do dumb things, and eARC works, and the TV doesn't forget it's attached to the receiver... You can still plug in everything to the TV, and you don't have to uss the receiver to switch inputs. I typically run the movie disc players through the receiver, because they have high bitrate audio, and tvs like to mess that up.

[timc3]

Thats fine if you are happy with it, does the job no problem.

Its just I wouldn't want the TV doing the switching because you are still managing two remotes for that and I dont want the wiring to the TV, I would want more speakers and some basic room eq, delay correction and subwoofer management. And I always end up with more devices. I also want Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

My receiver does everything yours does and more, and the TV auto switches on and off but I am also been into this stuff for years.

[lttlrck]

I would guess that many people listen to more music than watch TV or movies. They might not want the TV on all the time. So a A/V receiver can make a lot of sense for them.

Plus AV receivers can consolidate all the connections so there is only one run to the TV. This could be done with an HDMI switch if you can find one that integrates as well as a receiver, with similar number of inputs and isn't a large fraction of the cost.

Plus many (most?) very nice speakers need an external amplifier. Once you look at the cost of a bare bones amp, an A/V receiver with everything else they offer makes a ton of sense. Even for two channels.

[hedora]

That’s what the sonos is for in this setup. If we eliminated it, I’d probably just put a VM with similar software on it on the linux box and give it access to linux’s line out. (A raspberry pi would work, but might need a better dac and it takes more cabinet space than a vm on an existing machine.)

[jeffbee]

I would say my greatest suspicion about such a setup would be that your TV is doing a poor job of decoding surround streams into sensible 2-channel downmixes. However, if you're happy with it, that's all that matters.

[hedora]

The AppleTV and Linux do the downmix (and are probably both state of the art at it.)

The console might be suboptimal, but it knows the TV is in 2 channel mode, so it it’s emitting surround encoded signal, that’s just dumb.

[iancmceachern]

It's for surround sound, really good surround sound you can't get from a soundboard. Once you go there you can't go back. It totally changes the experience. It has to be good, 7 channel surround with good speakers all around and audessy etc.