Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Channels to amplify

This sure seems like a question someone else would have already asked but nothing turned up in a search.

I've only been playing the HT game for a few months now, but from what I've heard at least on my system it seems like the surrounds and rears have less work to do than the mains and the center channel. Based on that, it seems overkill to have large amplifiers for these 'non-main' channels. That is, if you were going for more power from a receiver it might be more economical to concentrate on the 'front three' channels. Does that make sense? This ocurred to me as I was looking at 7x200 or 7x300 amps some vendors have out there.

It also seems like this would be ok for the soundstage because an A/V processor could compensate for any differences in propagation times thru the different amplifiers.

What do you think?

-Brian n8wrl

There are a lot of people that also listen to music in a 5.1 or 7.1 environment. In addition, some people use m60's or m80s all the way around. In those cases you would want the extra power. For HT use, many people do purchase amps, like outlaw mono's for the mains and let the receiver handle the other speakers.

getting a good 3 channel and letting the reciever take care of the 2 or 4 rear channels would be fine. when watching a movie 70% of the sounds come from the center channel. and should be the same for watching tv also, let the reciever do the processing.


what speakers are you thinking about getting, the only speakers that would need a "strong" amp would be the 80's.. if you get the 60's you could get a good 5,7 channel to power everything for a fair price.

depending on your budget and if you have already purchased anything, you might want to check this out.

http://www.spearitsound.com/nad/nadspec.htm

I'm not actually in the market for anything at the moment. I have M60's & VP100 and plenty of volume from the 120W coming out of my Pioneer. Just thinking 'what if' if I had it all to do over again.

-Brian n8wrl

Yes, this situation has been discussed on this board before and your assessment is correct.

The surrounds and rears really don't use that much power.