What product do I need? (1 Viewer)

[renesisg5]

Here's my current situation, I have a Yamaha 6295B 7.2 AVR with two Polk RTi A9's towers. At the moment, I'm bi-amping them and it sounds good. However, I'm looking to add a center speaker, a subwoofer and later on rear surrounds to the system. Will all these new speakers plugged in, I won't be able to bi-amp my front towers and it will suck up a lot of power from my AVR. What I would like is kind of another amplifier that would take the "out" front signal of my AVR and add some power to it before delivering it to my A9's. Is this possible? Is this a good solution? What products would be great for this? Thanks!

 

[gene c]

Actually, bi-amping the speakers with the Surround Back channels really doesn't accomplish much since they both share the same power supply. Think of a four wheel drive truck. Both the front wheels and rear wheels are getting their power from the same engine. Better traction maybe but no more power. What they really need is a second engine mounted in the rear (the Citroen 2CV actually did this. They mounted a second engine in the back to power the rear wheels of a front engine/front drive car!). Your receiver has 7.1 channel pre-outs so a better solution to get more amplifier power is to buy a seperate quality two channel amp just to power the fronts, like this one http://www.amazon.com/Onkyo-M-282-2-Channel-Power-Amplifier/dp/B000069E2V/ref=sr_1_9?s=aht&ie=UTF8&qid=1323660499&sr=1-9. If you must bi-amp them anyway then just buy a second identicle amp and hook them both up to the A9's.

 

[John Brill]

Better than the Onkyo 2-channel amp would be the Emotiva UPA-2.

 

[gene c]

Ya, the Emotiva is probably better. But since my reply was more of a "this is the type of thing you need" rather than a specific recomendation I decided to stick with a brand and retailer he might be more familiar with. Plus, the UPA-2 is out of stock . Not surprising since it was on clearance.

 

[renesisg5]

Interesting, it's not the first time I've heard of Emotiva, they seemed like good products. So with my current setup and considering that I'll upgrade to the same like of product in the polk family to end up with a 5.1 system some day, would that 2 channel amp be enough? i.e. will all the other speakers + sub get enough power or should I get a 2nd amp with more channels? Also looking at the pic below, I'd simply get the audio out of my current AVR into this and then out of the emotiva to the speakers? I have to say that I like that idea and the price... anyone knows what's the regular price on this? Thanks!