Will a 3 Channel amp suffice for a Home Theater setup?

stangjason

I've been shopping for budget 5 channel amps for around $200, a lot of older ones, and I've decided that I may be better off buying a good 3 channel amp instead. Will I be messing up my sound by running my rear speakers off of my receiver and my fronts off of a different amplifier?

All I really want is a bit more power to bring out the voices a little more during movies and to have the power to enjoy music on occasion. I suppose you could say I miss my H/K 635's musical capabilities plus it was a little less harsh at times during TV programs but my Pio 1120 does blow the H/K away when it comes to dvd/bluray movies.

disneyjoe7

You will be fine, run the 3 channel amp for the front / center and then run the rear surrounds off the AVR.

tonyb

Yep,what Steve said.
I know I said it before, but it's worth a mention again. If your missing the musicality, try swapping out cables,makes a world of difference.

stangjason

tonyb wrote: »

Yep,what Steve said.
I know I said it before, but it's worth a mention again. If your missing the musicality, try swapping out cables,makes a world of difference.

What cables do you mean? Speaker cables?

With exception of HDMI cables I am using the same ones as I did with the H/K Receiver.

nguyendot

I run an Adcom 2535 with 2 channels bridged for my center channel and am pretty happy with it.

stangjason

nguyendot wrote: »

I run an Adcom 2535 with 2 channels bridged for my center channel and am pretty happy with it.

Yeah that's about the only one I'm aware of at this moment. The one thing that bothers me about it is that my center channel will have a lot more power than my fronts but in a way that's probably what I might want plus the 60 watt power rating even though I know it's underrated and a lot more than the 50watts my Pioneer lab tested at (can anyone clear this up for me?).

nguyendot

Oh it puts out plenty of power, even at 60w. The center channel takes the most beating in home theater, and more power to it is always a good thing.

PrazVT

Would agree. I was using a Parasound 2250 for my surrounds for a while and this week, switched back to letting my receiver power the surrounds. Not hearing any difference really, with movies / tv.

3 ch is a good idea - esp for your stated budget.

Sherardp

I used to run 3 Outlaw M2200 monoblocks on my front end. Nice amps for sure if your looking, but as said earlier you will be fine. I eventually went to a 5 channel amp + my D-Sonic 1000S 2 channel amp for my fronts. A tad overkill but I love having it.

stangjason

Can two of these Adcom 2535 be bridged into a 5 channel amp?

cheddar

I've found that most movie surround tracks just don't use the other speakers enough to appreciate an audible difference with surround amplification. They usually get 1/10th of the power going to the front three with most effects. That's probably less than 5 watts per channel even at moderately loud volumes for most if not all of the movie.

cfrizz

They make a huge difference with SACDs and DVD-As Cheddar. After I moved, for a short time it took awhile for me to get my surrounds up and when I put in TDSOTM, I had to stop it & not play it until I got my surrounds hooked up.

But also, the speakers also benefitted from being hooked up to my Sunfire amp. I am able to more clearly hear the back channels with it, rather than when I just had them hoooked up to my old receiver. I swear the amps in receivers aren't worth crap.

cheddar

Yes, I'd agree that with any good music surround track, especially high resolution like SACD or DVD-As (blu-ray lossless music too), surrounds get a much better workout than with most movie tracks.

stangjason

cfrizz wrote: »

They make a huge difference with SACDs and DVD-As Cheddar. After I moved, for a short time it took awhile for me to get my surrounds up and when I put in TDSOTM, I had to stop it & not play it until I got my surrounds hooked up.

But also, the speakers also benefitted from being hooked up to my Sunfire amp. I am able to more clearly hear the back channels with it, rather than when I just had them hoooked up to my old receiver. I swear the amps in receivers aren't worth crap.

Are you saying I should use an amp on my rear speakers? My rear speakers are pretty useless for music, as far as I'm aware, because they are dipole/bipole. I put my speakers into stereo mode for music most of the time but 5 speaker stereo doesn't sound all too bad either and sort of adds an interesting effect to music to me.

ROHfan

tonyb wrote: »

Yep,what Steve said.
I know I said it before, but it's worth a mention again. If your missing the musicality, try swapping out cables,makes a world of difference.

Swapping cables makes that much of a difference to not need to add an external amp for musicality? Because if cables give better musicality then I may not need an avr with preouts and an external amp. That will save a lot of cash.

cfrizz

stangjason wrote: »

Are you saying I should use an amp on my rear speakers? My rear speakers are pretty useless for music, as far as I'm aware, because they are dipole/bipole. I put my speakers into stereo mode for music most of the time but 5 speaker stereo doesn't sound all too bad either and sort of adds an interesting effect to music to me.

Yes, the rear speakers sound just as good as the front speakers do with seperate amplification. Everyone gives them the short end of the stick, but mine really came alive when I hooked them up to my amp, we both have FXi3s. All my music is played in DTSII mode for music and the Sunfire does a very good job of sending even 2 channel music to all of my speakers.