Using my Power Amp + my receiver


I have a Carver AV405 multichannel power amp and also a Sony STR DE-985 receiver.

I was thinking that I could maybe use the power amp to drive the fronts, surrounds and center and use the receiver only to do the decoding.

Is it a good idea...how can I do this ???

Any help would be much appreciated.

Brgds.
foxtrot
Thanks for all the replies.

The receiver does have one set of pre outs, they must be for the front speakers.
I do have a Jeff Rowland preamp, I use my system mainly for 2 channel music, but nevertheless thought that using the Carver would surely improve the sound.

I will give it a try and let you guys know, thanks again.

Regards,
Hi Foxtrot, Slappy and Rich are right, you must have pre outs for each channel to do away with all the internal amps in your receiver. If you only have front L/R pre outs, then you will only use those channels for your sound upgrade. Let us know what you have. If your receiver has pre outs for all channels then your options are larger.
Slappy is correct. If your receiver has pre-outs, go ahead and connect your Carver to the pre-outs and your speakers to the Carver. The sound is bound to be better than coming from your receiver.

If you have Pre-outs on your reciever then you can run RCA connects from the Recievers pre-outs to the Carver.

If you dont have pre-outs, then, uhh.. then i guess you could alwaus get some boxes that turn high level input into standard rca connections, but this will degrade your sound.

if you have pre-outs then yeah it can be a good idea. im sure the carver has better amplifiers than the reciever does.
My last reciever had bridging clips in the pre-outs, and once you removed them it killed the internal amplifiers so the reciever still diddnt cook. That was nice. I dont think many recievers do that anymore. your sony might still get nice and toasty even though its amplifiers are not connected to anything...

i think. i could be completly wrong.

if you can do it, do it.

it would be even better yet if you could sport the money for a pre-amp and then you could use the reciever for a secondary system elsewhere