Question about hooking up pre/pro and amps (1 Viewer)

[carlos f]

I have a sony es 30 and a rotel rmb 1066 amp.

the amp is bridged (3 x 150) to power my front

soundstage.

i'm about to get the rotel rsp 1066 and a

rb 1070 (2 x 130).

question is: should i use the 1070 to power the rears

or use it to power the front L and R and use the rmb 1066

to power the center and rears.

i talked to 2 salesguys in store and they didn't agree on setup.

any thoughts on which would sound better and why?

speakers are HTD Level 3.

thanks.

 

[Mike Matheson]

Carlos,

You may hate this answer, but it'd be best to try it yourself and see--shouldn't be that hard to do--usually it's just a bit of cable swapping.

I've got equivalent 2chn & 3chn amps, and use the 2chn to power the front, the 3chn to power the center and rears. My thought is that the rears don't take much power, thus there's a lot of reserve for the third channel which the center may actually make use of.

But it looks like your amps are not exact equivalents--so I'd recommend trying and hearing.

Regards,

Mike

 

[Harold_C]

No question about it.

Use the RB-1070 to drive the front speakers and the RMB-1066 to drive the center and surrounds. A bridged amplifier never sounds as good, or has as much headroom as an amplifier running unbridged. Driving all channels bridged on the RMB-1066 will definitely be giving it a workout. Since the surrounds, on average, place fewer demands on the RMB-1066, this will help offset some of the disadvantages of bridging.

You'd have to answer this for yourself as far as the dollars go, but rather than buying the RB-1070, you might see what it would cost to trade in the RMB-1066 on the RMB-1075 (5 x 120 watts). That would be the best way to go, because it would avoid the issue of bridging altogether.