"upgrade" sound quality

Welcome to Club Polk.

You might also want to think about adding a separate amp to the mix. Look at Outlaw Audio & Emotiva XPA series to put you on the right track.

Or you can buy used from Audiogon look for Parasound, Rotel, Sunfire, Adcom, B & K, etc.

Welcome Upstate.

He can get all the extra power he needs by utilizing his preamp outputs & buying a 200wpc separate amp! NO receiver will give him that much power.

Correction an Sunfire receiver will. But if he is happy with his receiver, he should just get an amp.

It is only an upgrade if he will actually need and use all those bells & whistles.

Nor will the Denon "pump a continuous 130wpc" into his speakers ESPECIALLY if he is using more than 2 channels. The more speakers being used the more the power has to be split into each channel.

He will be lucky if he get 70wpc when all his speakers are cooking.

With the budget specified he could utilize that amount of dough a lot more wisely then what that Denon could do. I'll leave it to the HT buffs to get him/her set on the right track since I'm only a 2-channel guy.

I'd also like to add that it appears that sound quality improvement is what the goal is, not the amount of bells, whistles and connections.

Your AVR 240 has 7.1 channel pre-outs so it's easy to add additional amplification. I'd recommend an Emotiva XPA5. Emotiva designs their amplifiers to be easy to drive using the preamplifier section from receivers (high voltage gain design). Not the most refined sounding, but plenty powerful. You could still use the receiver for the back two speakers. For $699 shipped with a 5 year warranty, it's a hard to beat deal. The only reason to get a different receiver would be if you wanted to get into Blu-Ray via an HDMI cable. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with using your receiver as is.

You didn't mention a subwoofer. If you don't have one, I'd highly recommend getting one. Polk makes some excellent ones now.

F1nut wrote: »

From the Denon website:



So, just 6 channels have their own power supply. It does not have Pure Audio Construction, whatever the hell that is and does not use toridal transformers, which begs the question, what type are the transformers and how many are there?

For $3500.00 one could do very well buying used separates. Just something to consider.

From here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=860539

Three independent transformers provide the juice for seven channels of 130WPC amplification, so you’ll have more than enough pristine power to feed even the most demanding speakers. Denon’s AL24+ processing reproduces low-level signals with optimum clarity to bring out all the delicate nuances of your music.

Before throwing money at a problem you do not have, take a min. and tell us what you like and don't like about your system. What budget were you thinking of for upgrades and what do you want out of them.

Here are some common suggestions:
Post some pictures of your room so we can make some suggestions on placement or room treatments.

Play with placement options for your front speakers. (toe in - further apart - closer together - closer or further from the back wall)

Room Treatments - your room has some of the largest effect on the sound of your system. Adding room treatments is a sure fire way to help with booming, echos or lack of clarity. There are ways to do it that look decent (but with that being said, I have not done it in my house yet because my version of decent and my wifes are very different... ).

Get a decent AV setup disk like Avia and an SPL meter from Radio Shack. Make sure your system is set up correctly and all channels are balanced the way they should be.

From there - just listen to as many home theaters as you can and tell us what you feel is missing in yours that you experienced in someone elses. That will be the best place to start.

For home theater I think the sub is the most important speaker you have. That is the speaker that will drop your jaw to the floor and keep it there. If you decide that your issue will not be solved by any methods listed above - invest in a killer subwoofer. - for your setup, it will pay way more dividends than a new reciever or amplifier (in my opinion).

Upstatemax wrote: »

Then tell me why the Denon will not run at the stated wattage... I have seen several of you slam them as liars, yet no one is proving it.

All I am looking for is an explanation, because everything I can find says that it will run as stated.

Look, I'm not trying to be a troublemaker here and I apologize if that's the way I came across. I have owned a Denon model that was either this model or one very similar. Under a low impedance load, it chokes. Using the Audyssey or whatever EQ program it has to adjust for room acoustics makes it even worse. Not that it's not a good receiver or program, it's just that it's not a high current amplifier. Whenever I used the Audyssey, the headroom was exhausted quickly by it's trying to over amplify a particular frequency, taking the available power away from other frequencies that it had to reproduce. The end result was bad sound.

If you do a search on receivers on this very forum, you will read buckets of information on why the stated is not the actual when it comes to wattage. There are also links to where you can visually see the end result of actual -vs- stated to answer your question. This should help you to understand. One thing that's important to note is that having a high wattage amp is NOT the same as having a high current amp. If I were to run this amp with a Carver ALIII speaker which is nominally rated at 4 ohms [yet dips down lower during transients], this amplifier would either go into circuit protection or overload itself, self destructing. The only way around that is to play at low volumes.

The main point of what I was stating is that for that kind of coin, he could utilize the $$$ to improve the sound much better than going that route. MkLoki looks like he's setting the OP on the right track, trying low to no cost setup options first and then if the issue or request isn't achieved, then after we know more about the OP's setup we can offer a more educated answer to better suit the goal given the budget.