Thanks for clarifying — that helps a lot. Since you listen to multichannel music I’m gonna reiterate my recommendation for the McCormack amp I linked above, and for only $800 I’m confident you’ll hear a substantial improvement over the amps in your AVR.
Moving to separates
Does anyone have an experience they'd like to share about going from just an AVR or integrated to using external amp(s)? My Integra AVR has 100 W per channel (class AB), all channels driven, and sounds very good, so it is not clear to me that there is any advantage to connecting its preouts to a separate amp. Might be a total waste of money. Please mention your specific equipment. Thanks!
Showing 3 responses by soix
You would still be using the AVR for video/multichannel and the integrated would take over for stereo, and you could toggle between the two with the push of a button. But if you need/want the Dirac for 2-channel as well then yes you couldn’t use an integrated amp. By the way, if it’s still available this McCormack is an excellent 5-channel amp and is a screaming bargain at the price. https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650104997-mccormack-dna-ht-5/ |
If this is just for HT I wouldn’t bother unless the AVR just doesn’t have sufficient power, which it probably does. If it’s at all for 2 channel then get a stereo integrated amp and run the front L/R preouts from the AVR to the HT bypass or other unused line input on the integrated. Reason being that the preamp sections of mass market AVRs suck and preamps are important, so if you just replace the amp the preamp section of the AVR becomes a huge bottleneck to performance and using an integrated amp gets the AVR completely out of the signal path for 2 channel, which is what you want. Hope this helps. |