New HD compatible AV Preamps?

Not many to choose from at the moment Adrian. The only one I can think of is the Integra DCT-9.8. Has everything you mentioned but currently not available in Europe. It will be coming to the UK in May/June this year, probably under the Onkyo-Pro label.

Rumours starting to circulate now that the Arcam AV9 will be replaced towards the end of this year with something HDMI compatible and capable of decoding DD TrueHD, DTS-MA, etc. Not sure about video processing though. Take a look at hififorsale.com and you'll see plenty of AV9s and AV8s have appeared on the 2nd hand market.

Allan

All Onkyo's receivers from the £400 TX-SR605 upwards have the ability to decode the HD Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio codecs.

Denon's AV receivers from the AVR2808 can also do this.

I believe NAD's receivers were updated in late February to include the ability. Up until then they could 'only' cope with uncompressed PCM which is pretty good too of course.

Allan:

I didn't know this US-Integra DCT-9.8: http://www.integrahometheater.com/main_page.cfm

I only knew the big Integra Pre- RDC-7.1: http://www.integraresearch.com/

This Integra is the luxury Onkyo (like Lexus for Toyota). I don't know, if they have something in common with the model you have indicated? The RDC-7.1 is good, but a few years old and has no HDMI at all. I have not heard of any successors up to now... They don't look as they where in the same price range.

Frank:

Thanks for the Onkyo/Denon receivers, I read about them. Yamaha has some new ones too.
But since I d'like to keep my full naim speakers/poweramps setup, I am looking for a PREamp/processor of a better quality to replace my AV2. Shure the integrated POWERamps of a £400 all-in-one box is no match for a set of NAP500/250/145 (full setup is in my profile)

I have seen the NAD T175 preamp on the web. But they only state the classic Dolby and DTS standards.
http://nadelectronics.com/products/home-theatre-amplifi...d-Sound-Preamplifier

They mention a probable HD-sound decoding upgrade on the "Next Gen AV" link top right on the page. But the don't say when, how much, software only or more?

Adrian

I have searched and found a few rumors in other forums. Those seems to be some of the "high-end" AV Preamps with HDMI 1.3 and HD-sound decoding in the pipeline:

Denon AVP-A1 HD
Primare SP32
Cary Cinema 11a + 11
Classe SSP-800
Marantz AV8003
Tact TCS MkIII
Arcam AV10
SimAudio Moon CP100
Theta upgrade of CB III

What could be the best match with naim?
Naim is friendly invited to contribute their coming gear to this list

happy listening
Adrian

I'm also eagerly awaiting a decent preamp for decoding the HD sound formats, but I don't want one that includes video processing - just pass-through of video from an HDMI input.

Come on Naim...

krell do one which now has 1.3 hdmi
meridian are replacing the g61 I think with an hd model this product has only been on the market a short time as well

neill

ps naim must have a prototype or at least be playing with something av2 is around 8 years old now

pps wonder how much more business they would do with a more upto date av range

Audiolab's latest processor preamp offers the ability to receive uncompressed PCM. I believe all Blu-ray players are required to be able to output this.

In fact, I was told that they have to unpack the TrueHD/DTS-MA stream and repack it to send it in its original state to the processor. I got this from the Audiolab rep recently who knows his onions. There should be no difference in quality between the two.

All versions of HDMI should be able to carry uncompressed multi-channel PCM - back to HDMI 1.0 That was important for backwards compatibility.

But then the player has to decode the native stream first. I think there is no player on the market yet, that is able to decode all possible sound formats (incl. hd) itself...

nice summary: Blu-ray Audio Formats Explained

When you want to use new BD 1.1 profile "bonus view" tricks like picture in picture for commentary, the player needs 2 video and 2 audio decoders to do so... but then he will always send the selfmade mix decoded as PCM over HDMI.

I have read in a av-magazine that it is not possible to encode a hd-sound stream in realtime (too much data for the current processors). And in my view, re-encoding can't be good for the quality anyway.
It's even worse for the picture: a good compression for a whole hd movie in h.264 encoding, a can take up to 2 weeks! But surely the studio equipment will improve too over time...

happy decoding
Adrian