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New Rotel owner here, I'm running the RAP1580MK2 with a fairly basic two channel system (left and right fronts, and a subwoofer), for both music and home theatre. I do not plan to add other speakers at this point.
Primary input source is an AppleTV 4K, which I use for music, movie streaming, etc., although I plan to add other inputs later.
Home theatre content is often in multi-channel formats like Dolby Digital, ATMOS, etc., so obviously the multi-channel audio has to be downmixed for two channels. So there are basically two ways this can be done when using an AppleTV:
(1) The AppleTV has a "CHANGE FORMAT: STEREO" setting in which you can tell the AppleTV to downmix audio output through the HDMI cable to stereo, in which case the Rotel receives an already-downmixed signal.
(2) The AppleTV leaves the audio untouched, in its original format, and let the Rotel do the downmixing work.
Both of these work, but does anyone have experience or thoughts on which method would yield better sound? Conventional wisdom would suggest (2) is better, let the higher-end Rotel receiver process the signal instead of the mass-produced AppleTV, but as this is basically a software issue, it's possible that Apple's algorithms for downmixing could be better than Rotel's. My unscientific A/B testing indicates that method (1) yields about 10% higher volume but it's hard to tell if there's a quality difference as it's not possible to immediately switch between the two methods, so I wondered if anyone had any experience or thoughts on this point.
Thanks.
Primary input source is an AppleTV 4K, which I use for music, movie streaming, etc., although I plan to add other inputs later.
Home theatre content is often in multi-channel formats like Dolby Digital, ATMOS, etc., so obviously the multi-channel audio has to be downmixed for two channels. So there are basically two ways this can be done when using an AppleTV:
(1) The AppleTV has a "CHANGE FORMAT: STEREO" setting in which you can tell the AppleTV to downmix audio output through the HDMI cable to stereo, in which case the Rotel receives an already-downmixed signal.
(2) The AppleTV leaves the audio untouched, in its original format, and let the Rotel do the downmixing work.
Both of these work, but does anyone have experience or thoughts on which method would yield better sound? Conventional wisdom would suggest (2) is better, let the higher-end Rotel receiver process the signal instead of the mass-produced AppleTV, but as this is basically a software issue, it's possible that Apple's algorithms for downmixing could be better than Rotel's. My unscientific A/B testing indicates that method (1) yields about 10% higher volume but it's hard to tell if there's a quality difference as it's not possible to immediately switch between the two methods, so I wondered if anyone had any experience or thoughts on this point.
Thanks.
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