Hi All I need some advise I presently have a Yamaha Rx-V2095 receiver it's rated at 100WPC into 8 ohms. I'm driving a pair of M60's as my mains. I was wondering would it make any difference in sound quality if I used the pre out of the receiver to drive 2 outlaw M220 monoblocks? I listen to music and HT. The reason I'm thinking of the outlaws is that my budget is limited.Would an assitional 100 watts pre channel have any inprovment> Thanks for any info you can give. I respect the opinions of everyone in this forum.

Quick answer is it will only make a significant difference if you play at VERY loud levels. I suspect the Yamaha plays as perfectly clean as any other amp of this type. That is until you play or hit a dynamic peak that requires more than the 100 watts it can provide. Then it will begin to clip, creating minor then major audio problems as the volume gets higher beyond it's ability. Abuse it too much and you risk damaging your components.

Some will claim the separates sound better by default at any level. I'm not experienced enough to argue but I do suspect that the audible differences might not be equivalent to the investment, unless you are a loud listener and hitting the clipping threshold.

How loud do you normally play. Don't happen to have an SPL meter laying around do you? Many people are happy with fairly loud levels from their 100 watt receiver.

2nd post. I guess I was away too long.
Heres another way to look at it. How much extra power do you get from the extra 100 watts?

According to this online Calculator which can only be used as a guide because it doesn't factor in a room and other variables, you can play pretty loud with just 100 watts on my M60 speakers at a listening distance of 3 meters.

As a reference, movie theaters often start 80 - 85 db average listening levels but can have peaks much higher. Again using my speakers sensitivity (cause I dont know yours), lets run some numbers.

A pretty moderate 75 db plus 15db headroom = 90db peaks. This uses only 5 watts.
(Loud peaks but comfortable even for your Mom to listen to.)

80 + a safer 20db of headroom =100db = 45 watts (100 db is fairly loud)

Lets use your 100 watts as a guide. In my scenario, we max out our capacity at a top end of

103 db using 90 watts. because just 1 more db....
104 db uses 113 watts

Now lets find out what another 100 watts will give you...
Just one more db, 105 takes you to 143 watts
Just two more db, 106 takes you to 180 watts.
Just three more db, 107 takes you to 226 watts.

In short, adding 100 extra watts will only give you an extra 3 db of clean & safe loudness.

If your all about loud, this noticeable but fairly small increase might be worth wile for you. I want to upgrade someday also to get more headroom but I'm holding off until I can go BIG!!!!!!

Hy, as Andrew(Murph)pointed out, spending more money on amplifiers would only be of benefit to you if at brief peaks your present Yamaha wasn't providing enough power for your M60s(unlikely). If more power was in fact needed at those peak moments, you'd be able to play them about 3dB louder with the doubled maximum power capacity that you're considering. At all other times there'd be no audible difference. Keep in mind that unused amplifier headroom is simply that: unused.

Thanks everyone. I'll just stay with my AMPS in th yamaha it doesn't seem that I would gain much in just going up an additional 100 watts. I really don't listen to music at loud levels I may increase it a bit for movies but not at the point that it distorts or clips. Again thanks for all your input. The only other reason I may want to go to the Outlaw AMPs if I get the urge to upgrade to the M80's. Im under the impression that my Yammy won't handle the 4 ohm load to well.

Buy the M80s, try the Yamaha and then decide if you need the amps, only you will know for sure if the Yamaha is working to your liking with those speakers.

My Denon 2805 did great handling my 7.1 setup, however, there is a difference when I added my Odyssey Monoblocks to power the 80's seperately, contrary to what others may say. jmo