Hey gang,

I've been thinking about upgrading my 1070 to get support for the new audio codecs as well as some room-correction software and the occasional no-audio, lockup issues. Is the SR5004 a lateral move as far as preamp/amp section or an upgrade/downgrade? The 1070 power supply is certainly beefier than the SR5004 but that's all I can really tell from looking at specs. Funny I was actually looking at the SR5004 and SR7002 before the Outlaw's made this announcement. I was leaning towards the SR7002 but with the Outlaw's endorsement maybe the SR5004 would be just fine. The other option I was considering was the NAD T747, although it's a bit pricier.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
-John

Hi John,
From my own experience, your best performance/dollar/ lowest hassle upgrade path would be to keep your 1070, purchase an Oppo Bdp-83SE (Get the Special Edition, NOT the standard one because you are going to hook it to your 1070’s 7.1 analog direct) and 5 pair of matching cables from the outlaws; the 5th pair is for the dedicated High performance 2 channel out on the Oppo. Your 1070 is a receiver that many people wish they could have, go check eBay, there is a 1070 with the bidding around $300.

I did a similar upgrade about 2 months ago; I went form my 1050 to a Marantz sr6003. I was expecting to use the 6003 as a one-box solution to get HD audio into my house. Once I got receiver, I discovered that My existing Blu-Ray player, a Sony BDP-S300 did not feature the ability to export DTS Master Audio, DSD (SACD) and a many other bitstream reasons I bought the Marantz to use with! I ended up having to buy an Oppo BDP-83 for $517.00 because it can pass everything via HDMI or play it through analog RCA; it might pay to make sure your BDP can export the HD audio over HDMI before you get a pre/pro.

The second ting I noticed with my 6003 is that the amplifier that comes inside is good, significantly better than the "Best-Buy" class of gear, but NOT an amp that could overshadow the amp in your 1070. After almost 9 years of listening to my 1050, and a week of listening to my 6003, I felt the output from my sr6003, seemed "thin", voices, cymbals and the like seemed to be “pushed up front” somewhat louder than drums, string bass and the other instruments, even in source direct mode. Within a week, I found myself doing eBay searches at my office: Adcom +amp, Outlaw +amp, Rotel +amp even Krell +amp (one can dream) until I found myself a Mint 7100 with the buy it now button gleaming at me; this cost $450 and another $183 for a set of pre owned Monster M100i 2m cables that took 17 days to get here from Asia!

Now that my upgrade is completed, I have a very satisfying temporary HT system. For Movie, the sr6003 partnered with my 7100 is most impressive, it produces a highly immersive HI-rez audiophile grade experience! Its also darn good for 2 channel, but that sense of voices and cymbals being “bumped up a little” gets on my nerves even though the deliciously articulate detail from the sr6003 makes 2 channel listening a lot of fun!

The technical reason for needing all this equipment is simply that 1050 doesn't have enough "pure direct" inputs, it only supports 5.1 direct analog, I couldn't have done 7.1, or utilized, without changing around cables all the time, the high performance 2 channel out form the OPPO, the main reason you’d get an SE.

For you, a BDP-83SE and good cables is all you need, The Oppo 83-SE sounds superb and your 1070 was built with the “stones” and all the direct analog bypass inputs you need. This is a straight foreword upgrade that will work, without any $-urprises!

I would have gotten the outlaw 7075 if they had pictures of it with the top cover off. One of the big "closes" on my 1050 purchase and the recent 7100 purchase was the "nekkid" pictures showing what was actually inside the "box".

I hope this helps.

-Mike H.

Oppp bdp-83
Marantz sr6003
Outlaw 7100
Acer Ph-530 projector.
Magnepan MG 2167-F (completely restored vintage) Main
Mission 773-C Center
Mission 77-DS Rear
Monster M100i 2m RCA interconnects on all channels
Monster Powerline-2 Speaker cable main and center
Monster XP-HP Rear Speakers

The MRX series from Anthem looks like something interesting
not that I'm about to replace my 1070...
but they do look like sexy receivers...