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Thanks for the thorough and brutally honest review, Mike. I was surprised the thing was able to handle the M80s and paralleled-M22 fronts so decently. I wonder how long it would be able to drive them at low 90+dB levels before it went into thermal protection.



After watching a couple flics last night, I’ve found its limit. -10 db on the volume control (range from -80 to +15). With the sub on, this is an average DB of 90 with peaks up to 100. If I bump it up higher than that, it will eventually shut down. And it does exactly that, shut down.

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LMFO....and clipping beyond all recognition..you guys make me laff

wanna hear a really rockin setup?...pm me



Try as hard as I might, I can not read that without being offended. What kind of an idiot do you take me for? If it was clipping, I’d have recognized it and reported it. I have nothing to gain or loose here. Nothing. Feel free to go screw yourself.

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Nice review Mike. Have you tried running the 80s full range with no sub? I would be curious how it would fare.



No, but good idea! I’ll try that and report back.

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Thanks for typing that up, Mike.

It sounds like the 661 makes a decent pre/pro? How do you like the user interface?



Well, I think it will be a love / hate relationship. All these damn Scenes and Sound Field options, I’ll go crazy trying to figure them out. But on the other hand, it would appear by speed reading the manual (still haven’t really read it), that someone with patience could set up individual Scenes with unique sound fields for every input. Seeing how I only have one input, I doubt I’ll ever use them. But for others, it may be attractive to them.

Set up is very easy. The easiest I’ve seen yet, ever. But…..that also means that this unit does not have all the features one might want. For example, I can not set up the M-channel digital inputs differently than the standard bitstream inputs. If you have an HD player that screws up the LFE channel, you can not fix that with the receiver.

Other than that, I haven’t played with it enough to give a detailed opinion.

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Great review, Mike! The 661 might just make for a good pre/pro to mate with my RB-1080.



I think it would be a great Pre/Pro. If I keep it, I will definitely have to get an external amp. I do not like being restricted by wattage and sometimes 100 db’s just isn’t enough…