Panasonic XR55 7.1 Digital Receiver - Page 5

I'm using JBL HLS620 mains, HLS Center, and JBL N24s for surrounds.
I've listened to CDs, watched DVDs and HD content from my DirecTiVo, through digital inputs as well as analog, and I'm pleased with it.
If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to respond. I'm sorry, but as I said, I'm no audiophile, but I'll do my best.

in stereo mode, does the subwoofer play?

Are you running a 7.1 setup? If so, does the XR55 overlay PL2x over DTS?

No.


No, just 5.1. I need to update my speakers, and may get a pair of JBL E10's, but haven't decided for sure yet.

Are you sure the sub does not work when you are in stereo mode?

It does with all the previous models, at least with the xr25, xr45, xr70 that I have had. That would be a major drag if it does not work with the xr55. Sometimes you have to get the volume up a bit for the sub to kick in.

Does this XR55 have OSD? and does it have video upconversion?

My mistake - yes it does output via the subwoofer.


No onscreen display, and no video upconversion from composite to S-video. My plasma arrived on Tuesday or Wednesday, so I can't check upconversion to component, but I don't think it does. Its not listed as a feature in the manual or on the Panasonic website.

Excellent Ryansmith111! Thanks for confirming that.

bdbaba

I am a little bit confused. Everybody seems to be so hot on this Receiver. Maybe somebody can shed some light into these questions. I am gonna make some comparison with Yamaha RX-V550, but any decent analog receiver will serve same purpose.

1. Why would a pure digital receiver be so much better. As speakers need Analog, the signal need to be converted to Analog at one point anyway. Analog ones do it when the signal is low, digital ones do it just before it is output to speaker. Isn't that the same?
2. I thought the power supply was one of the most important piece in the receiver. How can a 135W power consumption adequetely drive this amplifier. Although people say the two power ratings are different and they are but they are certainly related. RX-V550 has close to 400W power supply (Sorry, actually I mean power consumption). I have serious doubts Pana having enough dynamic power. I don't buy that digitals are more power efficient. A huge percentage of the power is consumed at the output power amp and both analog and digital have to have similar consumption there.
3. Again the weight. Pana weighs less than half of Yamaha. The big percentage of a Receiver weight is the Power supply and the cooler. Power amp portion being similar on both receivers how come this Pana can adequetely cool itself
4. Pana has a THD about 0.09. Isn't that high? (Yamaha has 0.06)
5. Pana has a S/N Ratio of 85 DB's. I again find that too little. (Yamaha has over 100db)

If somebody can answer these question, I will be very happy as I am trying to decide between these two receivers

Others like you wondered the same things, and had their doubts. Many of them are now Panny owners. Listen to the Panny digital and you'll be blown away like everyone else.

I'm going to oversimplify a bit just to keep the post length under control:

1. Non-digital receivers use digital/analog conversions before they do amplification. The analog amplification also has a side effect of distortion, and even though different designs work to minimize this distortion, it still exists. Digital avoids the degradations that happen in the conversion stages and also the distortions. Now the end product that goes to your speakers is not 100% distortion free, but two of the main forces that act to lower the sound quality have been bypassed with new methods.

2. This method of amplification requires much less power. In the final product this translates into smaller power supplies, cooling sinks, chassis, and weight. I guess I would compare it to Honda and a Buick. How is the Honda quicker and higher top speed with its 165 HP versus the Buick's 300 HP? It's a stretch, but similar concept.

3. Power stage for this design does not have to be as overbuilt as on the big iron analog amplifiers. Remember, the Honda doesn't need a 300 HP power plan to easily outperform the Buick. Thus you end up with lower size and weight.

Personally I wonder when Panasonic or another maker is going to put a 3 inch thick 20 pound slab and an internal heating element in the bottom just to win over the old school audiophiles, but luckily it hasn't come to that yet.

4. & 5. The stats between different manufacturers are pretty irrelevant. One company's idea of 0.09 THD is totally different than the next. This irrelevance becomes even more dramatic when comparing against two pretty different types of technology.

There's a sound & vision article around where they measured real world results against the manufacturer's spec sheets, I believe pushing 5 channels hard at 6 ohms or thereabouts.

Although Yamaha's spec's weren't that much higher than actuals, the most interesting part is that the lowly old XR25 they used for their testing came out to a real world 85 Wpc (??) out of a claimed 100 W.

Consider that the Panasonic amps we yak about today (XR45, XR50, XR70, XR55) all are considered higher power than the old XR25.

Luckily for you these things are super cheap and available practically everywhere. Unless you are looking for tons of user controls, size, weight, and lots of binding posts, it's worth your while to check one out for yourself.

I wondered the same thing.


Actually, the great thing about the XR55 is that it does give you binding posts for all 7.1 speaker outputs.

I will take spacecowboy's advice and try it out (once it is available in Canada).
But I can't say I am convinced with Neild's arguments:
1. The Digital-Analog conversion and the degradation that goes along with it still happens, it just happens at the end stage. After all we have to produce analog signal for the speakers. And although analog amplification creates distortion, again a huge percentage of that happens in the power amp section of the amplifier. I seriously doubt you will be able to hear any distortion caused by a decent amplifier's pre-amp section. And the power amp section is common for both technologies.
2. As much of the power requirements for an amplifier are used in the Power amp section of the receivers and again as both design must share that. I fail to see how a digital design would use significantly less power.
3. See Point 2. The final stage must be the same for both designs. So we need a good cooler.

Well the real problem here is my inability to explain the advantage of the variable gain digital amplication better.

As for the power requirements of the last stage, when the stage before that is already well amplified at minimal distortion and no clipping, the last stage need not be as powerful/hot/heavy to achieve the same practical output. Feedback issues and multiple gain stages are no longer a consideration. As a beneficial side effect, the digitally amplified sound is much cleaner with a shockingly improved noise floor.

This is easily demonstrated by placing your ear to the speaker of a conventional amplified system that's been set to a high gain. You will hear a definite background hiss, even on top end gear. Do the same on a digitally amped system and you will hear...... almost nothing. It is dead silent.

I've said many a time, with the digital amps it's as much about what you DON'T hear, as what you do hear.

This carries through when there is sound being output. It is so clean and clear and without added distortion or clutter that you will be surprised at times to notice that a given sound came from your stereo not the environment around you. The extreme clarity and definition will make you think it's real. Your brand of cell phone rings in a movie and I guarantee you will be checking your phone instinctively. The same goes for doorbells, knocks, and other sound effects. You will hear instrument sounds in your records you never heard before, and though sad I suppose, the limitation and flaws of formats like the redbook CD will be quite evident. Lyrics are more distinct and you'll hear fret rubs you've never knew were there on your favorite recordings.

Your concept of digital right to final speaker driver is not new, just not yet practical. And the theory as that the best gains have been found in the current digital amp technology and that making that last stage all digital would only give an slight incremental benefit at the cost of having to replace all of ones speakers with expensive digital versions.

Here's a couple of better pieces from John Meyer that put my gibberish to shame:

http://www.newformresearch.com/digit...s-overview.htm

"But the XR45 plays very loudly and very cleanly and due to its digital brain, clipping is extremely graceful and in fact almost impossible to perceive. NAD put a lot of work into its amps to take the edge off clipping without hurting the music and they were the best at it in solid state amps but XR45 is downright tube-like in this area. In any case, there is more than enough power to light up our 22'x23' big room with the 645s biamped"

http://www.newformresearch.com/updateaug03.htm

"the typical distortion/output curves for digital amps I've seen would probably put the XR45 at 75w/ch, 20 to 20kHz with .04% distortion. This would be a much better looking spec and more indicative of the listening experience but marketing departments like to go for that big fat 100w figure. I guess it sells better to their target demographic"

the "hiss" issue alluded to is the reason i am going to try digital.

this receiver is true 7.1 and is available directly from the manufacturer for under $300 including shipping. if you want to "hate" on it then i must question your motives. i'm guessing this receiver scares the bejeezus out of some of the manufacturers who are so revered in here.

mine arrives today. i am demanding in terms of connectivity so i will hook it up and report back my thoughts.

The upshot, cataban, is that you don't need to agree with anyone's "arguments" - they're not presenting any. Neild tried to summarize for you some basic facts that are laid out in excruciating detail on any number of digital receiver threads you can search through here. Being new here perhaps you were unaware of the search function.

As far as "not buying that digitals are more power efficient" well, that's the wonderful thing about physics - it doesn't really care what you "buy" or not, it just IS.

Look, I am not trying to be negative or being hateful. I am just being a devil's advocate. That I am here is an indication that I am definitely considering this unit.
You have to understand that a light weight amplifier with a small power supply also could be a sign that it is a poorly built amplifier. Just making sure
I actually I tried to get more information about digital amplifiers, but could not find a lot. If somebody point me to a good resource(s), I will be very happy

Here ya go...

Link to Digital Amplifier advantage thread

when i get home today and hook up my receiver, i'd like everyone's permission to open a new "official" thread on this unit- this thread only has one user account so far, and there should be a thread about the actual receiver without 138 posts about the rumors.

I have never posted on avsforum before but reading this thread has just prompted me to register. I think creating a new official thread is a golden idea! please do.

now, aside from that, i discovered this when checking the receiver out on the website:

"Connect and Switch Between Multiple A/V Sources
This receiver has multiple audio/video inputs to handle all your source devicesTV, VCR, DVD player, cable box, and more. It even functions as a source selector, allowing you to connect multiple video sources to the receiver and run a single audio/video connection to just one of your TV's audio/video inputs. No more flipping through video inputs on your TV."

looks to me like it does have upconversion! This is awesome if it does because that is something i really want!!

anyways keep postin!

cjv123,

where did you order your xr55 from? panasonic website? i pre-ordered mine from j and r and i still have no idea when it's going to ship.

yes, from panasonic direct.

i'm skeptical re: upconversion, but i'll know in a few hours.

I was also but i mean its on the website....it doesnt say whether it is up to s-video or component or what, so let us know.

also, what do you guys think, black or silver?

(posting malfunction)

No hate taken, I remember laughing at these amps when they first came out and saying to myself "Just by making it thin and putting the funky blue light on it they will probably get a lot of people who care more about appearance than audio quality buying these cheap things. Those dumb rubes."

Then one day I was in a showroom that was set up for demo'ing some above average speakers, Jamo & Klipsch primarily. The sound was stunningly good which was to be expected. But most surprising were these cheap entry level set of Jamo's. Well now Jamo's are not bad obviously, but their entry level are these lightweight plastic orbs with a pretty mediocre low powered 6" U.F.O. style sub.

I could not believe how great these Jamo speakers sounded so I went on a quest to find out about them. Seems nobody else was that crazy about the speakers and they didn't sound too good outside the showroom either.

Finally I figured out that the true secret of the jaw dropping sound in that room on practically any speaker was that the showroom was running everything off a Panasonic XR25, basically because it was small and fit well on their shelf! At its low price the staff didn't mind it staying out and getting abused instead of their more expensive units.

They actually used the selling story that "Jamo speakers are so good they can make even this low end Panasonic amp sound good."

You might be able to identify with parts of the John Meyer articles referenced above. He says:


and


and my personal favorite, when he coined the concept of "Amp Clamps":

I bought the XR25 about a year ago and was VERY happy with the sound. As someone said things like cell phones or dogs barking in movies would make me turn my head. Had some quality problems though and had to have it repaired under warranty twice. The second time was about 1 month ago, a few days before my warranty expired. Long story short, the shop couldn't fix it so Panasonic sent them a brand new XR55. I pick it up tomorrow. Yeah Panasonic!

ok i'll just put this here.

mine arrived today, but i'm too tired to do much of anything with it until tmw.

here are some initial impressions, trying to be critical- it costs less than $300 delivered and it is important to know its limitations:

1) the thing is small and lightweight, and attractive. this is cool. i got the black and it has a completely blacked-out look- not metallic flat, more like an automobile with clearcoat. much, much better looking than the pictures on the internet suggested. i suppose i'd say go with black as the color if you are ambivalent.

2) the remote is not backlit and has small buttons because it is small and tries to be a universal remote.. this is not cool. this is a pet peeve of mine- if you can't make a top-quality universal remote then make a top quality remote for your device. instead, we end up with nothing of high quality. one good thing i can say about the remote is it has speaker A/ speaker B buttons- i can't find those on the kameleon for my kenwood and it annoys me greatly.

3) the speaker setups are great, solving a lot of issues i have. it's true 7.1 + B pair, and you can play all 10 speakers at once. this is very, very cool. you can also "biwire" for the fronts in 7.1 if you give up the Bs. this is cool because you could use this feature for crossed speaker-level subwoofer out for passive subs.

4) there are 2 digital audio optical ins and 2 coaxial ins. i had all optical so i need a coax cable or two. this kind of sucks. most importantly, you appear to be able to "auto detect" on all 4 digital inputs, not just on the CD and DVD ones. this is very cool. also, something i didn't know before is digital coax supports 192kb while optical only 96kb.

5) there is no digital optical out. this is not cool.

6) there are no multichannel preamp outs. this is not cool.

7) as mentioned above, the sub should stay on in 2CH mode. this is cool.

8) the back panel is extremely straightforward and well-organized. this is very cool. they strove for the SFF and it worked. btw, all of the speaker binding posts are 5-way.

9) there is little chance it upconverts from composite/svideo to component. once you figure out the connections it seems to separate the component switching form everything else. i could be wrong, of course. i'll find out tmw.

and

10) something very clever. if you are listening in 2CH (+Sub) mode, you can set the unit to use the additional amplification power that is sitting idle to double the power to the fronts. called "dual amp" mode. i don't listen to stuff very loud, but i will test this out over the weekend and tell you how it sounds.

summary:

the good- outstanding speaker connectivity, "auto detect" on all inputs, small form factor, dual-amp mode, biwire/bi-amp fronts.

the bad- no digital or preamp out

the ugly- the remote

Panasonic called me yesterday to tell me that mine is shipping so I should have it soon. I ordered black to match my setup.

cjv123, Can you have a look att the powerconnector and see if it states that it supports 220V or not?

I live in Europe so this is an important feature for me. I already have an imported Kenwood Receiver with a buzzing powertransformer I want to get rid of...

Another thing: What's the difference between a 6.1 and a 7.1 amp? I though it only dealt with speakers since 7.1 have their 2 back speakers in mono. Using an 6.1 amp, you could connect the two to one output. Inverted bi-amp? ;-)