September 2008

A few years back (probably 5 or so) I built up most of my current main AV setup[1]. It's an all Yamaha rig, with JBL Control 1AT speakers (main and centre) and a Celestion sub. At present, it's:

CD player: Yamaha CDC-685 multichanger. This has now been discontinued, but I'm not going to be changing this because they're not making any new multichangers at the moment. It's a fantastic unit, and has optical out. I also like the PlayXChange function which means you can change discs whilst one of them is playing. MiniDisc - Yamaha MDX-793. Again, this is discontinued. Not many people use MiniDisc now, but I've still got a whole pile of them with concerts on and such. I could transfer them, but well, I'm happy with it for now. Why bother? Cassette - Yamaha KX-580SE. Discontinued again. Brilliant bit of kit. What it does with noise reduction is amazing. Again, we've got loads of tapes. Can't fault it, and I'm happy not to transfer stuff whilst I've got this.

So, that's the stuff that I'm keeping. What am I upgrading?

The tuner deck is currently a TX-492RDS. This is going to be replaced by a TX-761 DAB tuner deck. The DVD player is currently a DVD-S796. There's nothing wrong with this - optical out for the audio, but it's being replaced with a DVD-S1700 which has HDMI (and optical) as well as upscaling to 1080p. Yes, Yamaha have just announced their Blu Ray player, but the specs on it look a bit pants for the £600 or so they're asking, and there's no point buying the S2700 when I'll be upgrading to Blu Ray shortly (when they've got a better offering). So why bother? The amp - I'm not sure on that one. I can't justify a Z11, but the RX-V2800 is apparently just around the corner. But that' been on the cards for months now. I'll probably hold off on making that decision for a while yet.

There's also a new panel on the way. I've been putting off getting a new telly until: A) 1080p panels drop to a sensible price B) The contrast ratios get to a decent level.

Since it's now possible to get a Samsung 1080p with 15000:1 contrast ratio that does pretty good blacks, I'll be getting one of these at some point soon, hence the major updates to the AV setup.