Receiver for a Small Room (1 Viewer)

[Adam_Stork]

Hiya all, first of all thanks for having me in this excellent forum, and thanks for the opportunity of picking all your brains!

I have a very small "living room": about 10 feet by 8 feet. It's an old warehouse so the ceiling is 12 feet tall and there is a 9 foot window that terminates the unit one side. The unit is like a yacht: long and slim; a door at one end, a large window at the other. While the floors and ceilings are poured concrete several inches thick, the walls are regular drywall and were not really fitted properly to the support pillars. Thus I'm somewhat concerned about noise leakage to the other units.

Is there any difference amongst receivers for small rooms? I would tend to think that obviously a lower-powered amp would be good for a start, but aside from that (and using the volume dial to keep it down hehe), is there an amp that is more discreet, more subtle that the others, is there one specifically designed for small rooms?

As for features and cost, I'm certainly no audiophile and won't be getting the top of the line from Denon or something. I've set a rough target of about 1000-1500 USD for the receiver, and certainly I'd like most of the major techonologies; THX, DTS ES, Dolby Pro Logic II, 6.1 or 7.1, etc. For instance the Yamaha HTR 5790 is roughly the kind of features and pricing I'd be attracted to, but the sound quality - discreet and subtle - for a small room is a larger consideration and I would be interested in paying more to maximize this factor. One thing I like about this particular amp (the purists will rightly scoff) is the YPAO feature that auto maticaly configures the acoustics and ballances. I also currently have an older audio-only Yamaha amp and have enjoyed it for years with no problems. But correct me if I'm wrong, but Yamaha amps have a reputation inappropriate to my current needs: they're known for their power, not their subtlety.

Thanks in advance for your input, and if I may mention, I'll be making a post in the Speakers section on the appropriate audio/theatre speakers for this room.

Cheers!

 

[John Garcia]

At $1K you can have your pick of the litter, and I think that is an ideal budget for any average sized room, and certainly for yours, which is on the smaller side. It doesn't take a lot of power to fill a room that size. My bedroom is about 11x12 and I am running a 2ch only setup with 95w and some smaller bookshelf speakers, and it is able to easily fill the entire room to extreme levels.

The "amp" is not generally what gives a receiver subtlety (it is a factor), but rather a larger factor may be whatever is doing the decoding - the player or the receiver's DACs. Yamaha tends to be on the very detailed side, often referred to as bright. Since you already have a Yammie, you would probably be fine going with them again. I have never really been a fan of Yamaha, but they sound great with the right speakers and source. The 5790 has gotten some pretty good reviews on this site, and would be plenty for that room size.

 

[Adam_Stork]

Thanks for your reply John!

I always had a good feeling about "Yammies" (hehe), but for my new needs I thought that it might be a bit too powerful, I'm pleased to hear thats not really the case.

Thats's one thing settled at least! Now I just need to figure out the speakers...(see post in speaker forum ).