Amp for complementing Yamaha RX-A2030 for 9.2 system (1 Viewer)

I have a Yamaha RX-A2030 and recently set up my room for 9.2 speaker layout from 7.2 and was very impressed with the addition of the front/high presence speakers that are placed about 6 1/2' off the ground, angled downward at 30 deg. and are at 10 and 2 o'clock from MLP. My room is 17' wide X 14' deep, existing doorways and mechanical's forced this. With this much wattage demand it seems I need to use a power amp to get the "pop" back into the sound. I know Yamaha suggests using a stereo power amp for the front L&R when a 9.2 set-up is deployed but I feel even with this help the AVR is lacking a bit for driving 7 additional speakers in my room. My question is; What will work better for this 9.2 set-up a 5 channel or a 7 channel amp with the 2030 AVR driving the 4 or 2 remaining speakers?
Thanks for any advice!

Your speakers are(their efficiency is a bigger determinant of loudness than "how much power you got")?

But no AVR has its actual rating x5/7/9 anyway.

Using all channels simultaneously probably reduces each to about 50wpc.

Your post is very vague. Even more vague than Sam's response, remarkably. Did you add a 2 channel amp? If so, what is it? Did you check the channel levels again after adding it, because they probably changed for the speakers on the external amp. In general, I would lean toward adding a 3 channel amp for the L/C/R channels and let the receiver drive all the surrounds. It would help to know what your speakers are, because they will largely determine the requirements for any amps you might use.

Vague?

He goes from 7 to 9 channels.

There is only a finite amount of power to go around. That "finite amount" is now /9.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when "adding in external power" is buying too much. Yamaha doesn't provide a number for power off the wall(if they do on the 2030, it is rare) to come up with an educated guess of the amount of power reserve.

I assume his "amount of musical pop" is based on perceived volume drop from 2 channel to 7, which is now 2 channel to 9.

Yes.


It would be a huge help to answer the questions I asked. Plus, it would help to know what the speakers are. If they are 98dB Klipsch, then even 9 channels should be perfectly reasonable for the receiver. If an external amp has been added and it still has lost "pop", then something else is probably wrong, because the two channels that have external power (L&R) are highly likely to draw more power than the new height channels.


It doesn't appear you actually read all of the original post, or my response.

JohnRice said:

Yes.

It would be a huge help to answer the questions I asked. Plus, it would help to know what the speakers are. If they are 98dB Klipsch, then even 9 channels should be perfectly reasonable for the receiver. If an external amp has been added and it still has lost "pop", then something else is probably wrong, because the two channels that have external power (L&R) are highly likely to draw more power than the new height channels.

It doesn't appear you actually read all of the original post, or my response.

Click to expand...

I didn't read your post?

Whatever.

I didn't read the OP post?

Really?

To clarify my set-up, I did not add a 2 channel amp I was pointing out that Yamaha suggests in the owner's manual that when you employ the 9.2 speaker arraignment it is recommended that you use a power amp for LR channels to handle the additional wattage demand.

My LCR's are Cinema 88's @ 98 db sensitivity; surrounds are Volt 10's @ 95 db; rear surrounds Pioneer Elite S-IW 571 @ 89 db and front presence are Polk Audio RC85i @ 90 db. For bass I have 2 DIY 12" 500 watt ported subs tuned by miniDSP. I have run REW several times and dialed them all in using the 2030's ample customizable tuning software. I also have room sound conditioning features such as wall and ceiling absorption panels at reflection points and where REW found problem spots along with 2 overhead diffusion panels.

Your LCR speakers are incredibly sensitive. For comparison, mine are 86dB sensitivity. That's on the low side, but I'll use it for comparison. The amp I have for mine is 500 watts per channel. Your speakers should be able to reach the same volume level mine need 500 watts for... with 30 watts. Yeah, you read that right.


The main reason I'm pointing this out is because the goal of taking speakers off the receiver and moving them to an external amp is to save on the load on the receiver. Your LCR speakers are SO sensitive, that taking them off the receiver won't reduce it's load much at all. As strange as it sounds, if you really think you want to add an external amp, I might use it on the other, less sensitive speakers. There's two sides to this, because they're usually reproducing less demanding and less loud audio, but they are so much less sensitive, they actually need more power.


That's the purely analytical approach, assuming all amps sound the same. I don't think they do. A higher quality external amp on the LCR speakers can improve the general sound quality of the system more than it will on the surround speakers. It just doesn't need to be extremely powerful. Doing that won't actually take much load off the receiver, though. It will ease the load on the receiver less than adding the two new 90dB surround speakers increased it.


Yeah, your situation is a bit of a paradox.

Going along with leaving the most efficient on the Yamaha...

Given they are also farther away...your Presence/rear surround need the most power. I wouldn't go any higher than 100wpc.

Just for fun, what level settings are the respective front/Presence and surround/rear surround speakers from each other?