Yamaha home cinema to with Gold Phantoms

[Snoopy8]

Ive ready all your informations, I will try to connect my first speakers with short cables to give a shot, maybe 2 speakers first for me not to buy a ton of equipment without having to buy 11 adapters and ending up it's not working.

It is OK to try with 2 first.  You will need the following:

• Instead of buying a PoE switch with 12 ports, you can a start with a smaller one or get 2 PoE injectors. 
  
• Ethernet cables with correct length
  
• 2 short optical cables, ideally with better connectors
  
• 2 Dante Ethernet to optical converters
  
• Dante Controller software (free)
  

** You can even use an existing AVR with preouts as a trial, but you will need a Dante analog to ethernet converter (double channel) (https://www.audinate.com/products/device...vio#analog), RCA to XLR adpaters (x2), and an additional PoE injector.

Also, you will need to enable low latency optical mode (DOS 2) to use Dante, and the Phantoms will no longer be available in the Devialet App.

I'll read the JBL AVR link you sent me, but I'm also considering the AVM 70 in comparison.

With the AVM 70, you will need additional

• Dante XLR to ethernet converters (https://www.audinate.com/products/device...vio#analog)
  
• Increase the number of PoE ports on switch (each Dante converter needs power)
  

The AVM 70 has Anthem Room Correction, the SDP-55 has Dirac Live, both just as good  I suspect the JBL phone app to be better and more versatile, but I do not have any details on it.  The Anthem app is essentially a phone remote.  If you want to do fancy multi room things and automation, the SDP-55 will be better.  But the SDP-55 is double the price of the AVM 70, but you need to factor in additional cost of 6 Dante adapters (5x double channel, 1x single) and a more expensive PoE switch.  Even with the additional bits, the AVM 70 is significantly cheaper.  ** The SDP-55 has the big advantage that it is all digital; AVM70 outputs analog which converted back to digital by Dante converter. 

I have set up a Dante home theatre with an AVM 60 (for someone else!).  Both the AVM 70 and SDP-55 will do the job well.

For the office, I think I was going to get a phono pre-amp from Pro-ject. It's simple and will do the phono pre-amp and conversion to digital which is enough for the active speakers I presume. But I'll drop the idea of adding a sub in this case.

Agree it will be simpler using a separate box to convert phono to optical.