Receiver Query: More Power, or Less Power w/ Amp?

[Rubicon]

Hello everybody. First off, this is my first post here after lurking for a time. I can usually find any info I need in the archives, but I could use some opinions here.

I'm looking to upgrade to a receiver with HDMI and therefore lossless audio. I recently bought new speakers, the Premier Acoustic PA-6F Titanium set, with the PA-120 sub. Now, my current receiver spits out only 90 watts per channel, so the speakers aren't nearly pushed to their full potential. BTW, the towers and center are rated to 175w, and the surrounds to 150w. All at 8 ohms.

I'm thinking about splurging on a Pioneer Elite receiver. My question is, would it be better to get a VSX-23TXH, rated at 110wpc, and use a power amp on the front three channels, or to get a SC-25 to power everything? The SC-25 is rated at 140wpc, and I've read they're usually pretty accurately rated.

I don't know too much about external amps, but I was looking at an Emotiva XPA-3 to power the front 3 channels, if I went the VSX-23 route. (Conversely, I suppose getting the SC-25 AND the XPA-3 would be an option...what do you think about that? ) Which brings me to a secondary question about amps: the XPA-3 gives 200wpc, so would it be wise to use it on my 175w speakers? Not sure how that works.

So any help and opinions you guys can give will be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance,
John

[solarrdadd]

howdy and welcome onboard. i'm sure you will find a great wealth of knowledge here at this site and i'm sure you will also contribute to our bank of knowledge too, again, welcome aboard!

what model receiver do you currently have and does it have multichannel inputs (analog)?
if it does then you can in fact get lossless audio from a blu-ray player that has multichannel analog outputs. that blu-ray player also needs to be able to decode the lossless codecs onboard i.e. Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD-MA then send it out via those analog outputs.

i will speak from experience to say that i currently use the emotiva XPA-5 to power 5 of my 7 speakers. i use my current receiver as a pre/pro and it powers my 2 remaining surround back channels. i can say nothing but praise for my XPA-5 it does everything i want it to and more with lots of headroom and the ability to support those high peaks during exploisions from action movies and boy my HD gaming on the ps3 is incredible (uncharted 2!)

for the money, it's a great choice and it hasn't let me down yet. my sound is like night and day from my receiver and my current receiver puts out 40 more watts per channel than your current one does so i can tell you i won't have any clipping problems associated with low power amplifications with receivers. oh yeah, it has never gotten hot, warm yes, hot, no and i've watched tv, movies & gaming for hours at a time (all day on the weekends) and nothing more than warm, my receiver on the other hand almost red hot at times!

best of luck to you and keep us posted!

[stickb5]

i saw your speakers online and read the specifications on it, and they seems like you would need a little more than a plain AV receiver to get their full potential, now in the other hand if you are going to setup your HT on a small to medium room it would be wise to get the AV receiver and check out the sound at reference level, the pioneer line is really good and they make great AV equipment, now it s up to you to find out if the AVR would give you enough power for the speakers not only by what the manufacture says on the specifications but really testing it and seeing for your self if is loud and clear enough for your needs. Ohh and with 200wpc in the Amplifier your speakers would be fine.

[Johnny Vinyl]

If given the choice, always go with as many seperate components as you can. No matter how good the AVR, it compromises on many issues. One of the most important is the power supply used. A seperate Power Amp will almost always give you a boost in quality.

Solarrdadd is a prime example of a member who can attest to that, and there are many others as well.

John

[solarrdadd]

Originally Posted by John72953

If given the choice, always go with as many seperate components as you can. No matter how good the AVR, it compromises on many issues. One of the most important is the power supply used. A seperate Power Amp will almost always give you a boost in quality.

Solarrdadd is a prime example of a member who can attest to that, and there are many others as well.

John

howdy john, it's raining down here in VA, how's the weather up there across the boarder?!?

[Rubicon]

Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

Originally Posted by solarrdadd

howdy and welcome onboard. i'm sure you will find a great wealth of knowledge here at this site and i'm sure you will also contribute to our bank of knowledge too, again, welcome aboard!

what model receiver do you currently have and does it have multichannel inputs (analog)?

Currently I have a Sony STR-DE698. It's a few years old, but has always put out decent sound. It does have multi-channel inputs, however, my bluray player doesn't have multi outputs. It's a Samsung BD-P1600. I've contemplated switching players, but I've been set on getting a new AVR anyway.
Thanks!

[Rubicon]

Originally Posted by John72953

If given the choice, always go with as many seperate components as you can. No matter how good the AVR, it compromises on many issues. One of the most important is the power supply used. A seperate Power Amp will almost always give you a boost in quality.

Solarrdadd is a prime example of a member who can attest to that, and there are many others as well.

John

Originally Posted by stickb5

i saw your speakers online and read the specifications on it, and they seems like you would need a little more than a plain AV receiver to get their full potential, now in the other hand if you are going to setup your HT on a small to medium room it would be wise to get the AV receiver and check out the sound at reference level, the pioneer line is really good and they make great AV equipment, now it s up to you to find out if the AVR would give you enough power for the speakers not only by what the manufacture says on the specifications but really testing it and seeing for your self if is loud and clear enough for your needs. Ohh and with 200wpc in the Amplifier your speakers would be fine.

Wow you guys are seriously making me want an amp! Here's a question: if I got the VSX-23 with 110wpc, and the XPA-3, would those 330 watts normally going to the front 3 channels be rerouted in any way to the rears?

[solarrdadd]

Originally Posted by Rubicon

Wow you guys are seriously making me want an amp! Here's a question: if I got the VSX-23 with 110wpc, and the XPA-3, would those 330 watts normally going to the front 3 channels be rerouted in any way to the rears?

no, it would only power the speakers connected to it's speaker terminals. also, the 330wpc rating is for 4 ohm speaker loads, it's 200wpc for 8 ohm speaker loads. the speakers you mentioned in your 1st post are 8 ohm speakers. you would use the amp to power your front 3 speakers @ 200wpc and use the receiver to power your surrounds @ it's rating.

if i were you, i would buy a new blu-ray player that has 5 - 7.1 analog outs and decodes all the lossless codecs (you would need to buy analog interconnects for this, no big deal) onboard, keep my receiver and buy the XPA-5 and power all 5 of the speakers at 200wpc with it, use the receiver as a pre-out, getting lossless from the blu-ray's onboard decoding. i would highly recommend the Oppo BD-83, i have one and next to my amp, it's one of the best upgrades to my system. i can speak to the blu-ray player and the amp from current owner experience. Oh, in case you didn't know, the Oppo player also does SACD (in it's native DSD) & DVD-A all for your audio entertainment, hell, it's plays almost everything and it's got 2 usable USB 2.0 ports, one on the front and one on the back, i've slapped an 8gb thumb drive on the back for expanded BD-LIVE storage, and you could put an external hard drive or a larger thumb drive on the front and use both at the same time, no switching!

knowing what i know now and in this economy, i would do what i mentioned above.

keep us in the loop buddy!

[Rubicon]

Originally Posted by solarrdadd

no, it would only power the speakers connected to it's speaker terminals. also, the 330wpc rating is for 4 ohm speaker loads, it's 200wpc for 8 ohm speaker loads. the speakers you mentioned in your 1st post are 8 ohm speakers. you would use the amp to power your front 3 speakers @ 200wpc and use the receiver to power your surrounds @ it's rating.

if i were you, i would buy a new blu-ray player that has 5 - 7.1 analog outs and decodes all the lossless codecs (you would need to buy analog interconnects for this, no big deal) onboard, keep my receiver and buy the XPA-5 and power all 5 of the speakers at 200wpc with it, use the receiver as a pre-out, getting lossless from the blu-ray's onboard decoding. i would highly recommend the Oppo BD-83, i have one and next to my amp, it's one of the best upgrades to my system. i can speak to the blu-ray player and the amp from current owner experience. Oh, in case you didn't know, the Oppo player also does SACD (in it's native DSD) & DVD-A all for your audio entertainment, hell, it's plays almost everything and it's got 2 usable USB 2.0 ports, one on the front and one on the back, i've slapped an 8gb thumb drive on the back for expanded BD-LIVE storage, and you could put an external hard drive or a larger thumb drive on the front and use both at the same time, no switching!

knowing what i know now and in this economy, i would do what i mentioned above.

keep us in the loop buddy!

Let me reword that. I meant would the receiver, since it would no longer be powering the front 3 channels, send the extra juice to the rear? Or is it's watt per channel set in stone? I think that's what you're saying but I wanna make sure.

That Oppo is a reeally nice player. Does it have a connection for instant streaming, for netfix or pandora etc.? That's one of the main things I like about my samsung.

Here's another question, I know it's been debated, but would using analog outs give superior audio over HDMI? I guess one wouldn't have to run the video through the receiver, if that even makes a difference.

[solarrdadd]

Originally Posted by Rubicon

Let me reword that. I meant would the receiver, since it would no longer be powering the front 3 channels, send the extra juice to the rear? Or is it's watt per channel set in stone? I think that's what you're saying but I wanna make sure.


the receiver will send whatever it's wpc rating is to each individual channel and no more. what it will do is be able to send the maximum of it's wpc rating to the rear speakers without the full load of the other channels to force the receiver to "hold anything back". other than that, no.

That Oppo is a reeally nice player. Does it have a connection for instant streaming, for netfix or pandora etc.? That's one of the main things I like about my samsung.

no it doesn't stream netflix or pandora. for me, i don't like streaming those things since i can't get true 1080p and i can't get lossless audio so what's the point with all of that ht equipment? all you can get is stereo for audio. it's no different with your sammy for what i get streaming on my xbox; i recommend using neflix for the blu-rays or worst case dvd's at least you'll get the 5.1 with the dvd's and of course the full package with the blu's. at this time streaming is more of a gimick. imo.

Here's another question, I know it's been debated, but would using analog outs give superior audio over HDMI? I guess one wouldn't have to run the video through the receiver, if that even makes a difference.

there should be no incredible difference between the two (some will argue that there is some difference with analog winning in some formats) when dealing with lossless, then, lossless is lossless. the major difference between the two is with HDMI you can bitstream the audio codec to your receiver, it will do the decoding and you can have the receiver's vanity codec light engaged i.e. "Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD-MA" when the player does the decoding and sends it out via analog your receiver will say something like "multichannel analog" other than that, there is no true difference; or at least not a mind blowing difference, imo.

[Rubicon]

Cool beans. Thanks. I'll keep you guys posted on what I decide.