Rti / CSi efficiency?

kneedragger37

Ok, so I've been lurking around reading everyone's opinions on other folks' setups, and I still don't know what to do...

I have a fairly new Onk TX-SR606 driving an older JBL compact sat/sub system. This system was bought for the living room of a one-bedroom apartment. Then I bought a house and I've been using the system in my much larger room, and it is lacking.

In addition, the room in my new house does not allow for placement of conventional side and rear surrounds, so I just bought 4 TC60i in-ceilings and those will be getting isntalled shortly.

I'm planning to get RTi A3 mains and a CSi A6 center to complete the speaker system. I'm also planning an upgrade to a Marantz SR-8002 receiver following that.

So, am I doing this in the right order? Are the TCi's/RTi's/CSi efficient enough to run off the receiver's 90w per channel (claimed by Onkyo -- probably closer to 70w with all 7 channels going)? Or, would I be better off getting the SR-8002 and snagging the speakers afterward?

My biggest fear would be getting the new speakers and then damaging them by underpowering them. My second biggest fear is getting an expensive AVR and then not being able to even appreciate my investment because of the old speakers.

Please help me figure out what to do!!!

Thanks in advance!

--Stuart

Erik Tracy

kneedragger37 wrote: »

Ok, so I've been lurking around reading everyone's opinions on other folks' setups, and I still don't know what to do...

I have a fairly new Onk TX-SR606 driving an older JBL compact sat/sub system. This system was bought for the living room of a one-bedroom apartment. Then I bought a house and I've been using the system in my much larger room, and it is lacking.

In addition, the room in my new house does not allow for placement of conventional side and rear surrounds, so I just bought 4 TC60i in-ceilings and those will be getting isntalled shortly.

I'm planning to get RTi A3 mains and a CSi A6 center to complete the speaker system. I'm also planning an upgrade to a Marantz SR-8002 receiver following that.

So, am I doing this in the right order? Are the TCi's/RTi's/CSi efficient enough to run off the receiver's 90w per channel (claimed by Onkyo -- probably closer to 70w with all 7 channels going)? Or, would I be better off getting the SR-8002 and snagging the speakers afterward?

My biggest fear would be getting the new speakers and then damaging them by underpowering them. My second biggest fear is getting an expensive AVR and then not being able to even appreciate my investment because of the old speakers.

Please help me figure out what to do!!!

Thanks in advance!

--Stuart

Power utilization will be a function of the speaker efficiency, the size of the room the speakers are in, how loud you like to push the speakers, and to a certain extent the dynamics of the music source based on the average listening level.

So, in a large room with the desire to go loud with a very dynamic music source (or movie) - then 90 watts can be used up fairly quickly.

But I'd say, overall, the SR606 should be able to do the job fine if you're careful and don't try to recreate a WHO concert.

Still - one feature you may want to consider is whether the SR606 has preouts so that later you can get an external amp as an 'upgrade' to drive you main fronts. Surrounds typically don't get a lot of signal source for movies - so unless you play on doing a lot of loud multi-channel music listening keeping the avr with an external amp (at a later date) should do you fine until you go the next step with a whole system upgrade.

Just my 2cents worth....

kneedragger37

Thanks Erik --

The first floor has an open floor plan, so having the system "in the living room" really means I have it on one side of a large room -- so I have to pressurize a room about 17' long by 23' wide.

I'm not going for rock concert volumes here -- just loud enough to have fun watching movies and have dialog be intelligible -- something that the small tweets in my current sat/sub system are having trouble with in this room. I just wanted to make sure the TX-SR606 wasn't so lacking that I would damage the speakers with this typ of regular usage.

I thought about adding an amp later, but unfortunately a downfall of the TX-SR606 is that it has no pre-amp outputs. This is for the living room though, not the dedicated theater, and I really didn't want to go hog-wild with separate pre/pro and amps. I considered an Integra DTR-8.8, but the price was prohibitive. The SR-8002 seems like a good compromise and I'm friends with a Marantz dealer who can make me a sweet deal when I'm ready. In the meantime, the RTi's will hopefully give me a little bit better imaging and look sweet to boot!

curved

The Marantz will power those just fine. I would upgrade to the Marantz sooner than later. Good choice with the CSi A6 and A3's!!