Is an AV Receiver necessary for me???

Question

Hey guys, I have all of my devises all ready hooked up to something that I can use my remote to switch between them. This means that when my tv is on I can switch between watching tv and playing xbox easily. I am about to buy a new surround sound system, do I need to buy an av receiver as well? Is the only think it does just control all of the wires? Please help... ps: I am buying the KEF KHT-3005 (black) model

Answer 1

oh my god why is everyone talking like a scientist???? hes just buying a stereo!!!! you can run all your audio from your components to the back of the stereo. if you have a vcr/dvd combo, run your audio/video to the line 1 or 2 input  of the combo, and run all your audio out to the stereo. see?? simple. no rocket science needed geez. lol

Answer 2

Even if you already have a centralized switch, you still need something to do your surround sound decoding.

The only benefit here is that you don't really need a receiver with bunches of video inputs on it - that can be handled by your other switch.  

The downside is that your setup may be slightly more complicated since you will have to switch to the video source you want, and then turn on the surround sound separately.  One of the benefits of a higher-end receiver is that it can also act as a switch for your video as well - so everything connects to your receiver, and the receiver is your switch.

However I like flexibility even if it means more complexity, so I have a separate switch (or use my TV as a switch) as well as a surround sound system.

Answer 3

Hi,

    the AV Receiver is in fact switching central and analog amplifier and computes 3D Sound. The sound-speakers you are targeting are active ones, amplifier is built into the sub woofer.

Most of the functionality you would have unused.

The question is how do you get the analog multi-channel sound from the source to the speakers. I expect the xbox have only digital or optical multi-channel output +(analog stereo output), so you are missing something, which calculates the 3D Sound. There exists boxes which does that (creative and teufel have some and costs 100$+), in that case you have the question, whether buying passive speakers with AV would be not the better choice.

I personally had the same problem last year and finally decided to skip all the stuff with surround and buy-ed a decent Stereo system, which I attached all the devices.