Is the Onkyo 600 enough to power a 7.1 setup? (1 Viewer)

[Justin Friedman]

Hi,

As stated earlier, I'm leaning towards the Onkyo 600 reciever for my new home theater. I plan to match it with the JBL NSP1 setup for now until I purchase a pair of JBL ND310II's for the mains and thus turn it into a 7.1 setup. My question is, is the Onkyo 600 powerful enough for this setup? Is there a receiver better suited for this task that has at least the same features as the Onkyo and maybe more i.e. auto-calibration would be great? : ) Am I making a good choice for the mains? Thanks!

 

[BrentB]

The 600 doesn't supply speaker the support for a 7.1 set-up. Only 6.1 I think.

 

[Stephen Hopkins]

You can still do 7.1, you just have to wire the back to speakers in series... this is how all 6.1 receivers w/ dual binding posts for the rear do it, they just to it internally.

As for having enough power, it really depends on your room size and speaker sensitivity. I believe the sensitivity on the N24s is around 89db/w/m... meaning at 3 meters away from your mains you could get over 100db assuming your receiver puts out 75% of it's rated power and you don't have any huge lulls in frequency response due to room nodes.

Will it be painfully loud, no. Will it be louder than you'll ever want to watch a whole movie, yes. Distortion is another factor as I have no idea when your amp will clip or at what volume your speakers will distort due to cone diffraction or VC heat dispersion. Either way I believe you'll be able to reach very acceptable volumes assuming you're in a reasonably sized room (less than 700 square feet).

Hope this helps