pre amp outs

danger boy

Okay. I'm wanting to add an amp to my receiver. and I'm fairly sure I know how to hook it up. Receiver pre-outs to amp in's via RCA cables? then from amp out to speakers, okay good so far I think.

my question is will i notice a difference in sound using the pre-outs and adding an amp to my system? Instead of having the receiver do the work? I have a small Marantz SR5000 with 70wpc x 5. very underpowered.
so I now want to add either a Marantz 5 channel amp or mono blocks, one for each of the 5 channels. I am only looking at Marantz amps right now because they would work with the bus-link (sp) remote and I can power everything at once.
so will i notice an improvement in sound quailty is my question?
if anyone could enlighten me on the pre-outs / amps VS receiver doing the work. It would be appreciated
thanks

juice21

you will be very happy with the result of the seperate amp! the amp is built to handle and deliever the power better than a reciver. the marantz monoblocks sound amazing. i've demoed these at a local hi-fi shoppe paired with def. tech. speakers. the monoblocks put out effortless sound. i haven't heard the mm9000, but i am certain that it will give you a more pleasurable result that your current recievers amplification. the mm9000 will put you up to 150W/channel, and the monoblocks can either be 125 or 200 depending on which ones you go with, the ma500's, or ma700's. the ma500's are the ones i've auditioned...

danger boy

thanks juice21, those are the ones i'm looking at. the MA500 mono blocks, they are discontinued now.. but have read they sound great.
thanks for your help

juice21

they do....:D i actually listened to them about 6 months ago now, and my local dealer was down to just what he had in the showroom. he was still selling them for regular price...

they can be found on ebay, audiogon, and a couple of other sites though as well. good luck in your search!

Systems

Can you use a preamp out as an additional record out? To avoid using a switcher if you have more than one analog recording device you want to use? Yes, I know that the easiest way to find out is to try it, but I wanted to ask here first to see if anyone knows if it will cause damage. Thanks.

lbrenner

Yes, you can certainly use the pre-amp-outs to drive a recorder, but there are two "downers" to doing this:

1. You better want to listen to what you're recording at the same level all the way through, because if you change the volume you're listening at, you just changed the volume you're recording at!

2. The pre-amp-out, being attenuated by the volume control, may force you to increase the record level on your recorder. This will likely raise the noise floor, which may or may not be noticeable. Try it.

You can get switchers for this purpose, too. I've got two old equalizers that add support for two recorders to make up for the one they took away, and a Sony box that supposedly does this for 3 recorders (but I've yet to try that out for some reason).

Oh... you could also connect both recorders in parallel with Y adapters, but I wouldn't risk doing that to their outputs.

Oh again... you could also connect the two recorders in series I'll bet, too. Put the better quality one "nearest" the receiver. And don't do "off the tape monitoring" of the near one while you're recording on the far one!

Systems

Thanks. I'll probably just get a switcher & leave the preamp out unused for now. I definitely want to be able to adjust volume w/out altering record level.