Help: How Do I Hook up XPA-3 to my Denon AVR 889

TREMORkeen

I have a set of RTi A9, Csi A6, a set of Fxi A6, a set of RTi A3 and the DSW Pro 600...

I recently bought the Emotiva XPA-3 for my set of RTi A9 and the Csi A6...

I have a Denon AVR 889 and i want to hook up to the Power Amp...

My situation is i dont have a single center, FL, FR outputs on the back of the reciever to go to the inputs of XPA-3...How do i set it up to where i can amp my speakers so i can watch movies at Dolby Digital sound quality?

Another question i have is how do i control the gain intensity of the amp to the speakers? Will it always be at Max Amp Gain to the speakers?

manman

I'm not an expert on this subject but from looking at the 889 it doesn't look like it has any pre-outs which is the only way I know of connecting an external amp. You might want to check your manual and see if it says anything about that though, the manual for my Onkyo has information about hooking up an external power amp.

wutadumsn23

I don't think it has pre-outs like manman stated, not an expert on Denon's though. If it doesn't have them, there is no way to hook up an external amp, and you can just give that XPA-3 to me, lol.

comfortablycurt

manman and wutadum are right. That receiver doesn't have pre-amp outputs, so hooking up an external amp is impossible with that receiver. Looks like it's time to look into either a receiver with pre-amp outputs, or a seperate pre-amp processor.

Dawgfish

Actaully there may be a solution but I personaly don't know how well it works. There was a post here on CP within the last couple of weeks where someone had found a device that converted line level speaker output form the AVR to low level RCA. I think they ran about $40 a piece for the converter and each converter handeld two channels, so if you go this rout you'll have to buy two of these to use all three channels of the XPA-3. I love my XPA-3 btw. Anyways the poster never replied wether they bought and tried this device. Do a search on here or look back over the last few weeks posts and you should find the post and a link for the device. Good luck and if you do try this, please post and let us know how it works.

Otherwise you'll have to go to a different AVR with preouts.

danlarson

My recommendation:

Look for a harmon kardon AVR on Amazon, you can get one for a few hundred bucks and you'll LOVE it. It'll be a solid investment with that setup, they are very flexible, super powerful, and they have pre outs. I have a avr 354, and was running a similar setup, but opted for outlaw amps.

Dawgfish

If you are interested in trying out the converter thing here's the link:

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76990

Murray1

Sounds like you may be faced with purchasing a new receiver. Make sure you pick one that has HD audio (True Dolby) so you can take advantage of your high end system. Hopefully, that should make you feel better.

PSOVLSK

If you have to get a new AVR, I recommend getting the cheapest you can find with the features you want. No need paying for a better amp section of an AVR that you're not even using. I was looking to get a new AVR recnetly, but went in a different direction. A few units I looked at were the H/K 245, Yamaha 663 and Onyko 705 (could be wrong on that model #)

nooshinjohn

or buy my yamaha rx-v2090 from me for 150.00... its an amazing receiver

obieone

All is NOT lost! That avr has a 'zone 2' output, so: You run the L/R via zone 2 and leave the rest via 'speaker out' The RTiA9's are the only ones that REALLY require uber juice. Plus, without running the center ch. you'll get an extra 25wpc(according to Emotiva)
The only down side is, you'll have to run both main and zone 2 @ the same time.
Unless of course, you WANT to spend the $$$.