enough power for my Rt55is?

jack7777

I am setting up a system and dont know if my receiver has enough power? It is a onkyo tx-sr502. It is a 6.1 @75watts per. I am going to use rt55is for front and rear, cs400 for front center and rear center. The system is used for movies only. If it matters the room is 14x17. Does the onkyo have enough power??? thanks for you time Jack

shack

You never have enought power . That being said...are you using a sub? If so, you are probably ok. Plus that is a fairly small room. I push the same speakers in my HT with a Denon @ 85wpc. Most folks set their speakers to small and let the sub do the low stuff. I run my setup on large and in a room more than twice the size as yours. It goes as loud as I want it to. More power won't necessarily get you "louder", but it should give you better, cleaner SQ at all volume levels. The RT55is and CS400is are pretty efficient so they don't have to have lots and lots of power to perform well. However...if you decide you want to listen to movies at VERY loud levels, that Onkyo could start running out of gas on some of the more involved passages and you could experience some clipping...which could do some damage to those fine speakers.

Bottom line...If you're ok with moderately loud levels, you should be ok. More than that and I would look for something with a little more muscle. (not necessaitly wpc though...high current and ratings with all channels driven could mean that a receiver that lists "less" wpc could actually be stronger. ie: NAD, Outlaw, etc...)

jack7777

shack wrote:

You never have enought power . That being said...are you using a sub? If so, you are probably ok. Plus that is a fairly small room. I push the same speakers in my HT with a Denon @ 85wpc. Most folks set their speakers to small and let the sub do the low stuff. I run my setup on large and in a room more than twice the size as yours. It goes as loud as I want it to. More power won't necessarily get you "louder", but it should give you better, cleaner SQ at all volume levels. The RT55is and CS400is are pretty efficient so they don't have to have lots and lots of power to perform well. However...if you decide you want to listen to movies at VERY loud levels, that Onkyo could start running out of gas on some of the more involved passages and you could experience some clipping...which could do some damage to those fine speakers.

Bottom line...If you're ok with moderately loud levels, you should be ok. More than that and I would look for something with a little more muscle. (not necessaitly wpc though...high current and ratings with all channels driven could mean that a receiver that lists "less" wpc could actually be stronger. ie: NAD, Outlaw, etc...)

Thanks, I guess i need to start looking for a new receiver

Ferres

I used a Marantz sr6300 100wpc with my 55i's. I used both A and B zones so I could do the biwire thing, the 55i's really like to be bi/wired/amped.

shack

Ferres wrote:

I used both A and B zones so I could do the biwire thing, the 55i's really like to be bi/wired/amped.

Ah.....Ghetto bi-amping....which is NOT bi-amping at all and is of no real value. There is only one reciever I've heard of that actually has separate amps for A & B and the Marantz is not it. The A/B speakers run off the same power supply on most receivers so it isn't like you are using two separate amps...and if you don't have 2 separate amps you are not bi-amping.

ohskigod

not biamping per say, but it is still biwiring, which with the RT55 even makes a little improvement.
My rt55's are surrounds now, so no biamp biwire being done, but when they were my main 2 channel speakers, the difference between the jumpers, bi-wiring, and bi-amping were pretty apparent in terms of sound quality

shack

ohskigod wrote:

not biamping per say, but it is still biwiring,

Actually it's not even that. Bi-wiring is separating the tweets from the woofers when coming from the same single amplification source. What he is doing is crossing amplification sources (which are shared amps). I found no real improvement in my RT55is when I bi-wired. I can see where Bi-amping could be of some value in certain situations....but is probably overkill for the most part.

PolknPepsi

jack7777 wrote:

I am setting up a system and dont know if my receiver has enough power? It is a onkyo tx-sr502. It is a 6.1 @75watts per. I am going to use rt55is for front and rear, cs400 for front center and rear center. The system is used for movies only. If it matters the room is 14x17. Does the onkyo have enough power??? thanks for you time Jack

I had my RT55i's hooked up to a Denon 100 watt stereo receiver in a 12'x16' room and at low volumes it was ok. I loaned them to my brother before I had a chance to hear them with a dedicated amp, I bet I missed out on quite a bit.
Sometimes I would like to take them back just to see how they sound with my 120 watt Sonographe amp.

Ferres

The A/B thing probably just boosted the watts per channel effect.
I did move to an xlo biwired cables which did show real improvements. Really brings out the 'phantom' center.

Later on I got the 2nd hand parasound 2200II which was even better.

ohskigod

good point Feres, Jack should know that some seperate amplification will improve the sound of those rt55's. his onk might not have pre outs though.

hold on to those speakers jack, they're keepers. a great bookshelf

had mine since new and wont get rid of em anytime soom.

Ferres

The rt55i is a great speaker. I have an lsi9 to compare with it. Under identical conditions the rti55's still can hold it's own with the lsi9's.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Lsi9's. They are my mains.
But from time to time I would still give a listen to the layed back sounds of the 55's

Yes, I am a convert to separates. They do sound a lot better. The Lsi9's forced me to go the separates route since they trip the 'protect' of the marantz reciever in multichannel mode. I think most decent recievers now have pre-outs for adding power-amps which is great when you decide to upgrade.