Loughborough, Sony etc.

Thanks. Do you mean VSX1131 is very good compared to that Yamaha? I am planning for Q Accoustics 2000i 5.1 package speakers £450. Which speakers did they used in the demo?

I do own it yes. I'm very happy with it. I know a lot of people probably wouldn't admit if they bought a lemon.

I'm not an audiophile/snob and I wouldn't ever buy bose / sennheiser all that jazz but I do apreciate good quality sound having been a sound and lighting technician many moons ago. I think it's an excellent system. The sound is very good and in my opinion it was better than the £500 denon amp that I had before this. If you buy it from Richer Sounds they are really fine with you returning it if you don't like it and swapping it out. I swapped it after 3 days and they were fine with me exchanging it.

I'm using 9.1 speaker setup with Yamaha speakers ... two are ceiling speakers and two are floor standing, the rest is from a 5.1 kit. I have my Amazon echo hooked up for streaming music, it does DTS-X just fine, everything I've thrown at it .. it has played it just great.

It's probably not going to sound like a £1000 amp but since I have it plugged into an Amazon Echo and my TV I don't really mind in fact, im very impressed. I think it's a bargain at £299 very much. The firmware was a bit dodgy at first, but it's fine now as long as the first thing you do before you use it is update the firmware (very easy) and then do a full setup you should have no worries.

I've played HD audio on it too (FLAC) and via ARC using plex ... so not sure what the difficulty there is but perhaps not all TVs do it .. and maybe not all formats are supported? Not sure. But Dolby Digitial / DTX / AAC have all played just fine.

Get one, if you don't like it... just return it. Richer Sounds has excellent customer service.

Thanks. Do you mean VSX1131 is very good compared to that Yamaha? I am planning for Q Accoustics 2000i 5.1 package speakers £450. Which speakers did they used in the demo?

I went from a demo with a Yamaha RX-A660 £550, to this, and couldn't continue listening to it as the difference was shocking. Both were running in pure direct/direct in stereo. The pairing of speakers may have played a big part, as the speakers may just be more complete with the Yamaha sound. It's a shame as I was so ready to buy this AV at £350 looking at the specs, it's unreal for £300. If you have cheaper speakers, you probably won't notice a difference.

The maximum Atmos speaker configuration goes up to 7.2.2 (with seven speakers, two subwoofers and two Atmos channels

It says this in the first link. I've used it in 7.1 in Atmos.

Good price. Stereo performance was seriously underwhelming for me when i had a demo. Very flat (not in frequency) and sort of lifeless. I didn't enjoy it at all. Hard to explain. To add, it will depend on your speakers too, so your miles may vary. The Denon X2300W sounded better to me but £100 more.
The features are kind of mind blowing at the price just remember a lot of your money is going on that.

As i said above......ARC doesn't do HD Audio anyway, just compressed 5.1/ DTS etc, so exactly the same as optical

I had a similar problem with my Sony receiver when I upgraded to my LG OLED 4K tv. I have a 2.0 setup - with two lovely sounding floor standing gale speakers. Fortunately I can pass optical and HDMI at the same time from the TV. The amp won't pick up the sound as no ARC but the optical passes Dolby digital and it sounds no different to HD to me. The hdmi connection does pass cec though so it's really no different in real terms for sound. I only use one remote - The TV for everything and it works perfectly.

Better in my opinion. I'd go for the Denon here. There's something about this AV that doesn't do it for me. Apart from the features, it was very underwhelming.

HDMI ARC won't do HD audio from TV, it's not supported

so as i stated... same results

How does it compare to the denon:

http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/denon/avrx2300w/deno-avrx2300-blk

waiting for price drop on that one at the moment... (yes I know its £100 more)...

optical won't do HD audio from TV so not same results really

HDMI cables do vary, it's not really that they either work or they don't. 4k requires more bandwidth and a cable not up to the task may struggle or fail when passing a 4k feed especially at 10m but may work fine for 1080p.

In any case you will need a cable that is classed as 'high speed' , try your current one first. If it's classed as high speed and well made, you should be ok.

​Brilliant thanks for this will have a look around amazon for one. The only other issue I have is HDMI cables they either work or don't but do you actually now need to get ones to pass a 4k signal I mainly use my computer connected to the tv but it's under the stairs so 10m HDMI cable not cheap if I need to get an uprated one or is it all rubbish and my cable is fine just thinking of costs because the splitters are not amazingly cheap also kicking myself now could have bought another 922 for £40 on Facebook the other day if I knew about the splitter method.

I am looking to upgrade my vsx-922 which does not work very well with cec and return HDMI audio but mainly because my Tv is now 4k and it can only do 1080p I am really out of touch with amps now are pioneer still descent because they are cheap but have good features or should I be looking at something else now. I only use Jamo 102 hsc5 surround so not bothered about noise it all sounds the same to me just need video over phones mine only does audio and alreast 2k inputs

Anyone recommend a good stereo amp, max budget 300 pounds.

Yoghurt, sofa etc.

Tempted at £350 (previous price), and now trying not to rush to my local store (I have other financial commitments this month).