Why stereo receiver

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And, as an added bonus, maybe even C come equipped with a few extra talents you knew nothing about, but will love anyway. In a hurry? Here are some key things to keep in mind when shopping for an AV Receiver. An AV receiver contains five or more amplifiers at a minimum to drive five or more speakers. Why so many? A typical home theater system has 5 speakers that, together, create surround sound… and each speaker requires its own separate audio signal from the AV receiver.

These days, many home theaters have more than 5 speakers, including those that are Dolby Atmos-enabled. A stereo receiver contains 2 amplifiers one for each channel , and is primarily used for listening to audio. Think of channels as speakers. Ultimately, it comes down to price and priorities.

Bottom line: AV receivers were designed and built primarily for TVs as a way to bring an authentic, cinema-like experience to the home. On the flip side, like we said above, a stereo receiver and TV combination does not deliver surround sound on its own. The whole reason AV receivers exist in the first place is to make amazing home theater system surround sound possible.

What follows: Everything you need to consider when choosing the best receiver for you, your room, your tastes, and your budget. Plus, you want to make sure you can connect to everything you have now. Look for a minimum of 4 HDMI inputs so you can connect a cable box, a Blu-ray player, a PlayStation, and at least one more input for future expansion.

Planning to connect to a turntable? Be sure to look for a phono input. With 4K, the picture is so detailed, you can sit right in front of the TV with your nose almost touching the screen, and the picture still looks great. Even on the biggest 4K TVs. However, to make it all happen, your AV receiver needs to be capable of switching 4K signals. If it is, you can send both sound and picture from all your video sources through your sound system and enjoy live performance-sound without losing any detail in the video.

Another feature to look out for: HDCP 2. HDCP 2. Ideally, everyone would hard-wire physically plug in their TV to their home network, but that's not always possible — especially if you live in an apartment and can't run wires through walls. That's where Wi-Fi saves the day, allowing all the smart functions new TVs have for streaming movies, watching YouTube, etc. We're beginning to see Wi-Fi built into audio systems for the same reason, so you can, for instance, stream music without having to physically connect your sound system to your router.

DTS:X is a new surround sound format designed to make home theater audio more immersive, not unlike Dolby Atmos. Remember the old Mac vs. PC war? Same thing. The good news: most new AV receivers can play both formats. HDR on a TV generates higher contrast within the existing pixels, expanding contrast and color so the end result is more accurate and has more depth. How is HDR relevant to receivers? Like we said above: think of channels as speakers.

And though most music formats only require 2 channels left and right , the sky's the limit for true home theater surround sound. In a nutshell: The more channels you have, the more more speakers you can add — and the more speakers you add, the better and more immersive the sound. A good old stereo system is now referred to as 2. The "2" refers to the two front speakers, and the subwoofer is the ". Add another subwoofer to the setup, and you have a "5.

To recap: a 9. Plus two subwoofers, which are typically in the back, but can go anywhere. You'll need a receiver with 9 channels or more to power a system like this.

How much audible difference is there between the two? Still, that said, a few words on power from one of our own, a World Wide Stereo industry expert, Bob Cole:. That is, the loud parts can be a LOT louder! It's important to get a receiver with power reserves, or the loud parts will distort. That not only sounds bad, but it can hurt your speakers.

I like to see about Watts per channel or more for most rooms and speakers. Even better, some receivers have preamp output jacks on the rear, so you can later add a power amplifier to boost the power. It future-proofs your power. What to look for if you want wireless multi-room audio. In the old days, like way back in the year , if you wanted music in another room, you drilled lots of holes in walls and floors so you could run wires to speakers.

Both have served as panelists in several previous listening tests for Wirecutter and SoundStage. Generally speaking, a receiver combines a power amplifier which provides the power to drive your speakers , a preamplifier for selecting sources, controlling volume, and often adjusting tone , and a radio tuner.

We can think of two primary types of buyers who would be interested in a stereo receiver: those who want to listen to vinyl records and those who want a step up in sound quality from that of an all-in-one wireless speaker. Vinyl records have become popular once again. While some newer turntables have phono preamps and even Bluetooth wireless built in, most good ones do not, making them difficult to connect to wireless speakers. Most stereo receivers have phono preamps built in, so you can plug in a turntable and get good sound with no need to add extra components.

Although all-in-one wireless speakers have passed traditional stereo systems in popularity, none can match the sound quality you can get from a good stereo receiver and speakers, such as the top picks in our best bookshelf speakers guide. Because you can separate the speakers, you get true stereo sound and a thrilling sense of musicians performing live in the room with you. While wireless speakers can sound very good, almost all of them compromise sound quality in favor of a compact size and a decor-friendly design, and few can play as loudly and as clearly as a receiver and good traditional speakers can.

Any of the top picks in our best AV receiver guide will deliver far more features than a stereo receiver will, including the ability to power a surround-sound system and the ability to switch video signals and route them to a TV or projector.

But AV receivers are notoriously difficult to connect and configure. With stereo receivers, the process is simple: Wire up a couple of speakers, connect whatever sources you want to use a turntable, a computer, a wireless streaming adapter, an old CD player or tape deck , and then hit the power button and turn up the volume. Those who understandably want a simple way to play back music will enjoy having so few controls and no on-screen menus to mess with.

As before, I began my search for the best stereo receiver by scanning Amazon, Best Buy, and other retail websites. The only feature we considered mandatory for the receivers we tested was some sort of radio tuner. All but one of the models we tested included a phono input for a turntable, and all but one included Bluetooth. Only one, the Yamaha R-N, offered built-in Wi-Fi streaming and multiroom audio, but you can upgrade any receiver by adding these features as well as voice-controlled music and Internet radio playback via an Amazon Echo Dot or Echo Flex , both of which have an analog output that works with any receiver.

Google's Nest Mini offers only Bluetooth output. Power was not an important consideration for this test. In devices such as these, power differences of 10 or 20 watts are not significant. It takes twice as much power to get only 3 dB more volume, which is a just-noticeable difference—the equivalent of turning up a volume knob just slightly. Thus, a watt-per-channel receiver barely plays louder than a watt-per-channel receiver.

With this testing setup, there was no way for any listener to tell which receiver they were hearing. To accomplish this, I used a custom-built, remote-controlled switcher with nothing but a single relay, 2-inch-long cables, and a couple of banana plugs and jacks between the receivers and the speakers. This is critical to fair testing because if one receiver is only slightly louder than the others, listeners are likely to prefer it.

The listeners could use whatever music they wanted at whatever volume they wanted, sourced from a laptop computer feeding a Musical Fidelity VDAC digital-to-analog converter. The Cambridge Audio AXR, for example, has a much wider frequency range with less distortion, which allows it to provide better sound to speakers with the ability to showcase it and ears that are able to appreciate it. You may not be surprised to learn that the price of a stereo receiver is going to vary depending on how well it is made and how well it looks.

The problem is that working vintage stereo receivers are difficult to come by and those that are can be fairly expensive. It also, like the Yamaha R-SBL, has a preamp output that gives you the option of adding your own external preamplifier.

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