Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners New Receiver Advice

You could certainly do that and get gobs of clean output power, far more than your Pioneer will output. It's nice your Pioneer has pre-outs; these days manufacturers are eliminating pre-outs except on the up-market models.

If memory serves, that Pioneer you have may use the ICE Class D amplifier modules, based on a Bang&Olufson patent.

If you want other gizmos, you still may want to upgrade. I'm not much of an Audyssey fan, so unless you want that, your Pioneer's preamp section will certainly be fine to feed an Axiom power amp.

Regards,
Alan

Thanks Alan, I am pretty sure it is not a class D amp. VSX-1018AH-K
Think only the elites have class D. This one is 110 W a channel apparently, but now with good speakers the amp has to be turned up quite a bit more but depends on the source.

Hi Alan,

Do you have any experience with the Marantz SR6006?
I am interested in using it as a pre amp until the pre/pro I like becomes available.
I have an Outlaw 7700 amp and have ordered the Axiom Epic 80 system with the 180 center and QS8 surrounds with the EP800 sub.
(Just waiting for the shipping date.)
Any thoughts/impressions on the SR6006 is appreciated

thanks in advance
Jeff

Hi Strider53,

No, I don't have experience with recent Marantz, however I'm sure other Marantz owners will help you out.

Speaking generally, you should be fine using a Marantz AV receiver as a preamp with your Outlaw power amp. I mean, an engineer really has to be a bonehead to screw up a preamp section of an AV receiver. There are areas of potential inaccuracy in the analogue phono input--if the receiver has phono inputs--with sloppy design, but that would be most unusual. In the old days, cheap receivers often had fairly noisy phono preamp sections; more expensive models often had much quieter phono preamp sections (moving-magnet and moving-coil) but unless you play a lot of vinyl, that's irrelevant.

I think you'll be thrilled with the sound quality of your new Epic 80 and 180 center with the Outlaw amp.

Regards,
Alan

my receiver is the SR5005, last year's model, and i use it as a pre-pro
(except for the surround back channels, which are driven by the Marantz).
so, when i listen to something, it's mostly through the preamp, and when the sound source is of high quality, it's totally transparent; which means that not only the speakers are superb but also the preamp.
they just disappear...

no noise, no discernable distortion, flat Fr. Resp., great dynamics...

Reported for being too funny. Hopefully somebody at the DMV can make this a reality.