DreadPirateJosh

yoda-sama said:
It might be for the best to just sell off this set and put some money into a better all around setup. It’d likely be less headache in the end, and the sound quality would likely yield a noticeable improvement.

This is a legitimate consideration, and if you are going to sell off the old system, it’s always better to sell the whole thing as a full set now than to decide you aren’t happy with the speakers down the road and try to sell them after you’ve ditched the main unit and the sub (especially after you’ve chopped of their proprietary connectors).

I think it’s best to put in the forethought now, and if you do ever imagine you’ll sell it sometime in the future, you may as well do it now, since you’ll be able to recoup the biggest percentage of what you paid for it if you sell the whole thing together.

Of course, you could always try your current speakers with a new AVR and then if you decide you don’t like them, you can splice the old connectors back on and hope no prospective buyers will mind.

In case you are planning on re-using your current speakers that came with your Panasonic system (which seems like the case), you won’t be able to re-use the subwoofer. Any new AVR that you would buy expects the subwoofer to be powered, and your Panasonic sub is passive. You could fix this by purchasing a dedicated subwoofer plate amp to power your current sub, but that would be a waste of money, imo. If you’re going to spend any money on a subwoofer (which you will have to do under your planned setup), buy a decent sub instead of spending money to keep your old one alive.

You should be able to re-use the rest of the speakers without any issues. Looking at the manual for the Panasonic system, the speakers are 4Ω which most AVRs can power, although you might have to manually adjust some settings once you get it all hooked up. For example, the manual for my Denon says it can handle speakers that are 4–16Ω, but for speakers 6Ω or lower, you need to manually set the impedence so the AVR knows what to expect.

Harmy, you shouldn’t have to switch any settings back and forth for it to work with your computer speakers and HDMI/SPDIF, since bitstreaming can only work with these (HDMI/SPDIF) type outputs. For speaker output, FFDshow will still do all the decoding.

Of course, if you are already using your own audio decoder other than LAV, it may have its own unique settings in which you’ll enable bitstreaming.

Okay, there are a few things I would try. First, try installing the newest version of MPC-HC, which should come with its own internal LAV filters.
https://mpc-hc.org/downloads/

If that doesn’t work, then you can manually install LAV Filters and add them as external filters in MPC-HC. You can download them from http://www.videohelp.com/software/LAV-Filters. The installation may also prompt you to install LAV Splitter and LAV Audio, leave them checked. In fact, you can go ahead and leave all the components checked, it should be fine. Then, in MPC-HC, go to Options -> External Filters, select Add Filter, and add “LAV Splitter”, “LAV Splitter Source”, and “LAV Audio Decoder”. Double clicking on any of these after you’ve added them should bring up their options, so double click on “LAV Audio Decoder” which should bring up your bitstreaming options.

Harmy said:
And I pretty much had all that figured out, I just need to know really, if (and how) I can get lossless HD audio from the PC that way.

Yes, as long as you have PC Video Card -> HDMI -> AVR, you can directly bitstream the lossless audio through the HDMI. This can be enabled pretty easily in MPC-HC (in Options, go to Interal Filters, click Audio Decoders and under Bitstreaming check all the boxes for the audio types that you want to bitstream). As long as you have an AVR that can decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA, this will do exactly what you want.

Well, looks like it’s time to stop lurking on the ROTJ Despecialized thread and actually try to contribute something.

It seems like you have a few options. Without considering a new AV receiver, you may be able to send a direct audio bitstream via your soundcard’s TOSLINK output with MPC-HC. This bypasses any processing your sound card would do and lets the home theater system deal with the Dolby or DTS encoded data directly, instead of converting it to PCM (or Dolby Digital Live). The only issue is that the bandwidth limit of S/PDIF doesn’t allow DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD bitstreams. For this, you would need an HDMI connection, but it seems your Panasonic unit only has an HDMI out, not HDMI in. If you can live without DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD, you can enable direct bitstreaming in MPC-HC using this guide, although you would have to leave DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD unchecked when you get to the last step.

If you do want to consider buying a new AV receiver, I would recommend future proofing yourself a little and getting one that supports the (relatively) new Dolby Atmos format and the (brand) new DTS:X format. There’s a fairly comprehensive list of recievers that support these formats here. Keep in mind that the prices there won’t always be accurate, since these things go on sale all the time.

There are a few features that you might want to consider to help you narrow down what you want:
-Price - Obviously
-Number of channels - You can save some money by not going too far beyond your current 5.1 setup, although adding more will definitely take advantage of the “object oriented” approach of Atmos/DTS:X
-DTS:X itself - There isn’t a lot of support for this yet, so deciding you want it will definitely limit your options, although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Fewer options makes choosing easier!
-HDCP - Some receivers still don’t support the newest HDCP standard (2.2) for their HDMI inputs, which you will need if you want to view any UHD (4K, 4K/3D) content in the future.
-Upscaling - Some can upscale video content to 4K
-Network features - Some are wireless, others require ethernet. Some have features that are bluetooth enabled, can play internet radio, and can even play audio files over your home network.
-Audessy/Other automatic optimizers - Some receivers come with microphones that measure the output/delay of your speakers and automatically configure your sound for you.
-Total Harmonic Distortion / Signal to noise ratio - Putting too much stock into this is how you end up spending a ton of money on a reciever. Without going into too much detail, these determine the quality of your sound output.

I did a lot of research recently while shopping for a new receiver and ended up going with the Denon S910W. In my opinion, it’s the best “budget” (~$500USD) receiver. I’ve had it for a few weeks now, and it does everything I want and more.