New Ht Receivers and Old power amps,any lose in Sound quality

faster100

Ok i am new to Club polk, My second post
I have a integra DTR 7.1 receiver and just bought a used Onkyo M-504 power amp. What i want to know is? Do you lose sound quality useing old/older power amps hooked through your new gereration Ht receivers? I have this hooked up through my receivers pre-outs that i am glad it has for this reason, Any idea's would be great!! Thanks

mantis

I prefer a preamp over using a receiver as a pre amp.Its up to you if you want to go that route.If you feel the seperate amp has better sound quality , then do it.Use good Quality interconnects and off you go.

A good way to test the 2 amps against each other would be the following.......Run a song in 2 channel stereo and listen to the receivers amp first.Then rewire and try the seperate amp.Do this a couple times to hear the sound difference better or worse and figure what one you like best.

The only thing that comes into play is when you want to do Home Theater.Then you can have a tonal shift across the front soundstage if thats where the amp will power/live.

Id like to hear your views on this..I have done this test many times.

faster100

Well i have no intentions of useing separete pre amps, as i am very happy with my integra receiver and all its functions. What i really wanted to know as do you lose the decoding of DTS,DD or thx when it go's through the external amp? Or lose some of the quality? Not so much what better ways to go, But what i have and any sound loss that is noticable with my ears? That i might not be aware of, Thanks for the reply

HBombToo

You will not lose any functionality of your receiver and IMO the more power the better so you won't clip and trash your speakers.

mantis

No,
I'm following your question and I will answer that carefully.

OK all your doing by adding a seperate amp to your system is your by passing the internal amp inside the receiver.It still outputs everything that would have gone to the internal amp.It doesn't matter what you do.It comes out.

Now here's the only kicker.If you use the external amp to power the multiroom outputs for another room, you cannot output digital signals there.Only analog sources will pass out that preout.

If you use the amp for fronts,center,surrounds, all your processing is still there.

Do you understand that?I can explain it further if you like.

All will be good......just try my test before you add the amp..see if it's worth it.

faster100

Thanks!!! Thats exactly what i wanted to know in short. I hope i didn't offend you as to saying i didnt want separetes, I have already bought the amp and installed it and it seems more solid i guess you could say hence the extra power, 100 wpc vers. the M504 @ 165 wpc x4 into bi-amped speaker mains. I also wanted to know if the Older amps were better than? or as good as newer production amps? As i have heard some older amps are better sounding, Thanks again

mantis

At the end of the day it's all about how it sounds.Nothing more,nothing less.

No offence taking here.Enjoy what you built.

TroyD

faster,

IMO, new doesn't always equate to better. A solid state amp, functioning correctly, should retain the same qualities for many, many years.

Having said that, adding power amps to a receiver is a great way to get in to separates, IMO. Sure it's better to use separates but in HT, that is a pricey propostion.

I think you are on the right track, amigo.

BDT

faster100

Great and thanks for all the replies, Just what i was hopeing to hear,