Hey all, long time no see!

So I've been loving up my Axiom speakers for a few years now, but...

I've moved and my HT space is now much larger and I'm having to run my Denon AVR-1910 at or near -0dB for movies and sometimes you can hear the strain. Or at least I can. My wife and kids don't seem to notice/care.

So I'm looking at an Axiom ADA-1000 but I'll need a new Reciever because that Denon doesn't have pre-amp outs.

So if I don't need built in Amps, and I just need pre-outs, what Reciever do you guys recommend? I'm looking at the Outlaw 976 but it just doesn't have some of the bells and whistles that things like the Marantz AV 7705 does.

Thoughts?
Byron Armstrong

Just adding to the question—

When looking at separates, is there a large advantage of going 3 channel amp to power LCR and letting the receiver handle the rest of the surrounds vs choosing say a 7 channel amp? Just seems like a more expensive receiver is kind of useless when coupled with a 7 channel amp.

Thanks for the input.

How do you know you're running out of amp power? Did you compare the Denon's channel gain for your M22s and QS8s at your old vs. new place? If for example at your old place they were at 0dB and now they're at +3dB, it means your amp has to supply twice as much power to maintain reference SPL - at least that's how my Onk works because I've tested it. Even at +3dB, that Denon should have enough power unless your room is over-damped. How far from the fronts are you, how big is the room and what is on the floor, ceiling and wall surfaces? Are you able to take any voltage and current readings at the speaker terminals to calculate the power? If you can at least measure voltage using a 200Hz tone you can figure out the power from the impedance curve.

I see a gap in the market just like you. I'd like to buy an Onk (because I trust Onks) pre/pro only with all the same bells and whistles as one of their receivers. They can charge me the same price as a receiver so long as they employ a high fidelity design.

As for the 3-channel amp question, it's really a matter of whether or not you'll hit power limits on the surrounds if you power them from a receiver. I doubt my surrounds see more than 15W peaks on the most dynamic movie scenes. The center is a different story. As I've reported, my center sees 100W+ peaks.

To ATMOS or not to ATMOS, that is the question you must answer.

If no ATMOS and you want to get into separates, the Outlaw 976 or the Emotiva MC-700 would be high on my list.

If you think ATMOS is in your future, I've been happy with my Onkyo TX-NR686 which has a "claimed" 100wpc (10 more than the Denon?) and I'm running a similar speaker group as you (M22, VP180, QS-4's). The VP180 is a 4ohm beast and the Onkyo is handling it fine (I did add some extra ventilation though to keep it cool). I would think any of the mid-tier+ AVR's from all the suspects would be a good upgrade from the entry-level 2015 Denon model?

Of course, more robust brands with better internal amplification should also be considered. ARCAM, NAD, Rotel, Anthem, etc...

Every now and then I contemplate a full upgrade into separates. Top contenders for me would be the Marantz AV7705, Emotiva RMC-1, Anthem AVM-60, and the Bryston SP-4 (wonder if Axiom owners could get a discount ;-) ).

I'll stay out of the power amp recommendations. Definitely, the ADA's are worthy contenders.

Thanks for the input, all.

Mojo: When I first got into Home Theater it was explained to me that 0 is what the material was Mastered for. Turning it up into + territory risks clipping, so as far as I'm concerned -0 = Max Volume. If this incorrect feel free to educate me.

How do I know I'm running out of power? I turn it up to -0 and it's not loud enough.

And for reference the HT Room in my old house was a converted study, and it came in at about 1,350 cubic feet, and I was 7.5 feet from the screen.

In the new house it's a large living room with 12 foot ceilings. It measures about 7,750 cubic feet and I'm 12 feet from the screen. (I also need a bigger TV!)

I used to run movies at -12dB
Now I watch movies at -0.


Anyway... If anyone else has suggestions for favorite Recievers I'd love to hear them.

Thanks
Byron

I agree you shouldn't go above zero. I've noticed on my Onk, right around -3dB, I start detecting distortion. That however is unbearable so it's not even a practical concern.

My gain setting depends on source and program material though. On BluRays recorded in HD MA via my PS3, I never have to go above -20dB (this is less than a half watt nominal). With Netflix from my TV via HDMI, I'm usually good at -15dB but I do sometimes have to go to -10dB. Spotify via Chrome Video is usually -15dB but some songs I have to run at -5dB. I am in a 4200 cu. ft. room and 13' away from the fronts, 14' from the centre and 10' from the sides.

How do you know your M22s are not compressing? Did you ever run them as loud as now at your old place?

What is the calibration level in your Denon for your fronts?

Ok, that is a significant change in room size. Sounds like you went from a 12x14x8 room to a 25x25x12 great room! Yeah, I can definitely see the M22's and VP150 struggling to fill this with the inadequate power out of the Denon. Even the Outlaw sub won't be able to fill this massive space!

Simply upgrading your AVR is not likely going to cut it and at some point you are just going to introduce distortion to your speakers if you are trying to replicate "volume" levels experienced in your study.

You can approach this piecemeal and do one upgrade at a time depending on budget. Definitely your LCR's should be bigger. You have the space to go full tilt on M100's and a VP180! Then for sure you are a candidate for $1000 AVR's outputting at least 125wpc. I would honestly look at an Emotiva MC-700 and ADA 5-Channel amp combo (or an Emotiva A-500/XPA 5) if you don't think you will be doing ATMOS. And definitely a sub upgrade. 350W amp is nothing compared to an 800W EP-800! (Though even the EP500 and EP600 would be improvements).

You're overcomplicating this, I think.

90 Wpc Reciever.
Old HT small. Sound good.
New HT BIG. Not loud enough.
Want Amp. Go louder.
Maybe 180Wpc Reciever. Go louder too.

No, I never ran my system this loud in my old HT.

I don't know what you mean by M22s "compressing".

The right main is calibrated to 0 and the left is -1.5dB


I'm 87% certain that I simply need more power now that my room is 6x larger.

Thanks TDIpablo. Very concrete suggestions. I will look into those!

Byron

"Compressing" (dynamic compression) in this context means that the increase in sound level stops increasing at the same** rate as power level, generally because the drivers are starting to approach mechanical limits.

Nobody is disagreeing with your statement that you need more power; the question is how much more power you need and whether just adding power will be sufficient.

You are trying to fill 6x the room size so needing to go up 12dB is not a surprise (although it seems a bit higher than I would have expected). Unfortunately 12dB translates into ~16x the power requirement. You probably won't need 16x as much power as you have today because you probably weren't at the limits of your current receiver in the old room, but by the same token there's a good risk that 2x the power will not be enough either.

Bigger speakers tend to help with SPL requirements in two ways - one is power handling ability, and the other is efficiency (more SPL for same power).

That said, doubling the power will definitely make a noticeable difference, and you'll probably get an additional improvement from the pattern (I don't want to say fact) that high end receivers & amps tend to have more headroom above their power rating than lower powered units do.

What frequency are you crossing over to the subs at ? I'm asking because you might have an opportunity to get a bit more out of your system by bumping the crossover frequency up a bit, depending on where it is now. That would not make the system any louder for a given volume setting, but might let you turn the volume up a bit further before hitting amp or speaker limits.

Based on the channel levels you posted, and playing at 0dB, you may be driving your Denon into distortion. How many dB above zero can you go on that Denon? Careful you don't blow your ears or tweeters. Maybe disconnect your speakers when trying this.

Speakers thermally and/or mechanically compress if over-driven. If they are compressing, a larger amp will not help.

P.S. I see Bridgman has given you a very complete answer.

Taking consideration Bridgman's response, there is merit in tackling the electronic side of the equation first and see if an increase in power will produce a dynamic headroom improvement in the performance of the M22's and QS-8's. At a minimum, if you were to get larger speakers, you would need to this upgrade step as well.

The Emotiva route I mentioned is a popular one with those familiar with internet direct companies and willing to give them a shot.

I'm a big fan of NAD products and have a stereo amp in the living room. I would not hesitate to recommend any of their AVR's or Separates (T-7x7 series or M series).

On a budget? I've owned Denon and Yamaha in the past but much prefer my current Onkyo. Honestly though, it's a civic/accord vs corolla/camry vs sentra/Altima argument. They are all about the same. The higher end of their models tend to have a bit better build qualities.

Another interesting puppy on the market is the ARCAM AVR550. A bit pricey but I've heard good things. In the same vein, Rotel used to be a big player and the Rotel RAP-1580 would be a cool piece of gear to have... I would also consider the Anthem MRX720.

Dog I hate this hobby!

In your original post, you said you are hearing "strain". Strain is thermal and/or dynamic compression. If on the other hand you are hearing harsh highs, that's an indication of harmonic distortion from your Denon. Try to establish the root cause. You may want to talk with Axiom about it.

I miss the good old days when we had peak-reading VU meters and clipping lights. This whole "customer is too dumb to be told what is going on" thing really irks me.

That said, I do have to acknowledge and appreciate Axiom's "give them so much power they don't need clipping lights or VU meters" approach.

I've been thinking of building just such a thing. It would present practically 0 burden to the amp and have an app to show you all kinds of things like voltage, current, average power, peak power, waveform, harmonic spectrum, etc etc. It would be available in multi-channel.

Perhaps "strain" wasn't the best word. During loud passages it just feels like the dynamics aren't there... It sounds like the musical power is falling short of what it should be.

... It feels "not quite there". You know what I mean?

I'm watching Gladiator (for example) and just feeling like there should be more sound!

I do know what you mean. You've moved from an 800 cu ft room to over 7000 cu ft. And you have puny QS8s and M22s. I had QS8s and traded them in for QS10HP and I am so happy now. My space isn't as large as yours but it's not puny either at 4200 cu ft. My Onk, M5, QS10, EP800 and VP160 - all v4 - completely fill my space. I can't say I feel the rushing of wind or anything like that but my ears give out long before my system does. That's at around 30 to 40 Watts average peak power so it's not anywhere close to taxing my Onk. BTW, I can't say enough about v4 if you read my posts and product reviews.

Hi snazzed,

I just wanted to add the importance of having available dynamic headroom. Virtually all receivers and even many separates that use a switching power supply have no dynamic headroom. The power supply is sized to the RMS continuous power rating of the amplifier. In music and movies it is the dynamic peaks being clipped or compressed that cause the loss of performance at higher levels, which can be reached very quickly in large rooms. A few numbers to consider which Bridgman has already touched on; every time you double the distance from your speakers you lose 6dB, dynamic peaks can reach 12dB or more in music and movies, but you only gain 3dB for every doubling of the wattage of the amplifier. You can see how quickly you need a lot more power. A linear power supply with lots of storage capacitance will allow the amplifier to produce multiples of its rated power for short periods of time. All of our ADA amplifiers have this capability. So my suggestion would be to get a receiver that has pre-outs and not worry too much about its rated RMS power. Then get a separate amplifier with lots of dynamic headroom to power the front three channels. You can power the surrounds either from the receiver, by adding more channels to your main amplifier that is running your fronts, or by getting a smaller multi-channel separate amplifier to power the surrounds. There is a lot less dynamic power required for the surround channels.

Snazzed, I want to give you some numbers from my system so you can put Ian's feedback into context.

I have an Onkyo TX-NR818. It's rated 135W/channel to a similar standard as your Denon. I recently did a test with a 200Hz tone via my M100v4. You know my room size and how far away I sit. My room is on the lively side so it's not too damped. As I mentioned above, I normally listen between -10 and -20.

At -20, my Onk is putting out 0.2W and at -10 it's 1.75W. I can turn my Onk up to +13 but for the purpose of this test, I turned it up only to +10 because I was worried I might blow something up. At +10, the Onk was putting out 173W to EACH M100. I doubt it was a clean 175W - I don't know because I had hearing protection on.

With that as background, let's say the sound is only clean up to +4 which is almost 45W. I think it's quite a conservative assumption to say it's clean up to a third of its rated specification. So even at -10, that leaves me with 14dB of headroom. In a 4200 cu ft. room and 13 feet away from the mains!

Your Denon is rated at 90W so let's say it's only clean to 30W. If I use my Onk/M100 data as a guide, when you set it to 0, that's leaving you with only 3dB of headroom. That would mean dynamic content is getting clipped. Perhaps you're not hearing harshness in the highs and instead perceiving that "it's not there" because Denon has done a good job on its soft clipping circuit.

Now that I've gone through this analysis, I can recommend you ought to give an ADA a try.

P.S. Make sure you don't have something silly like "Night mode" on.

I will ask the question, When you say it is not loud enough, are you talking all frequencies or what?

I kind of remember Brigman going on about his experiment with speakers and how moving the couch made the sound improve. Throwing more power into a standing wave will do nothing to improve the sound. Have you tried moving the speakers around in the room (even non permanent) just to see if you are getting bad sound from the room rather than lack of power or speakers.

I think what's happening here is he's (she's?) gone from 800 cu ft to 7000+. He's gone from a standing wave jungle to almost no standing waves. He was used to the walls bending and now there's no boom. Like Doug Schneider. I read his reviews and his walls are always bending. If his walls aren't bending, the speakers under review must suck...lol! When I listen to the same tunes, all I get is lovely smooth bass and no boom!

Regarding buying a receiver with pre-outs and adding external amplification, not all pre-amps are the same. I don't know if any of the big name receivers have quality pre-amps. I recently discovered this and now I am on the hunt for more pristine electronics. The electronics have become the limiting factor in both of my v4 systems.

So here's my upgrade plan. Because really, I think 90 watts just isn't enough for 7,500 cubic feet.

Step 1, new PrePro and 5 channel amp. For the PrePro I'm leaning toward Emotiva. Maybe Marantz.

For the amp Axiom ADA-1000... or maybe Emotiva to be matchy-matchy with the pre-pro.

Step 2, (maybe next year) replace the M22s with a set of M60s or maybe M80s.

Ian, if you're reading this, Axiom needs a PrePro. Even if you were simply a vendor for, or re-branded, someone else's... If you had one I simply would have ordered it with the ADA and been done with it. Because I know and trust Axiom.

But as it stands I've had to leave the Axiom eco-system for a component and now I'm looking at other vendors. They have amps too... and wouldn't it be nice if the Amp and the PP matched?

Thanks all
Byron Armstrong

They used to sell another company's receivers back in the day. Was it Sherwood? This was before they offered their own amps, so there was no matching to worry about, and it was just a way to--like you want--keep it one simple transaction. I was personally never tempted because I was looking at other features at the time.

I'm considering getting an Anthem AV processor, but I could never justify the cost of their amplifiers. So much more bang for the buck with Axiom. I can't see that their black box is that much more attractive than Axiom's.

Years back, I did consider Emotiva. I owned an amp by them, but I didn't feel like I was getting that much more than I was getting out of my receiver. When I was looking at a pre-pro, I entertained the idea, but it seemed like their product was ever fully-baked, so I gave up on the idea. I'm not sure where they stand now. I'm a little wary of smaller, less-established companies trying to do sophisticated electronics. Even Oppo, which had a stellar name, fell short of my expectations. I regularly had issues playing Blu-rays, as they weren't nearly as fast updating their code as Sony with their PS3, so I would invariably need to use that as my player.

I wouldn't want to see Axiom get into that space, at least not without a sizable team dedicated just to that product line.

One thing I would like to see for the industry is speaker profiles that can be loaded onto your receiver that could take the place of any outboard DSP control. It would be cool to have an open standard that allows every loudspeaker manufacturer to tailor the performance of each of their speakers electronically, without them having to release their own product to do it.

Back in the 80's, I liked my gear to match and be all "cool" looking. The more lights the better. Now, my gear mostly sits in a media closet or behind dark tinted glass doors so looks are of a tertiary concern!

I also believe in the adage of "you get what you pay for" and agree about the Emotiva sentiment which is why I have never pulled the trigger. Judging from their forums, it takes a while for their products to be fully baked which is why I don't have a problem recommending their v2 or v3 offerings that aren't on the bleeding edge of new standards and tech.

When it comes to their amps, you need to look beyond their RMS ratings and take a closer look at their total dynamic headroom and the size/weight of the toroidal transformer as an indication of true power. For example, a $499USD A-500 5-channel amp is "rated" at 110wpc but weighs only 29 lbs. The ADA-1000 cost 2x as much but weighs 44lbs! You would need to move up to the Emotiva XPA-5 (at $1599USD/$2100CAD) to probably get similar performance as the ADA-1000...

Good luck with your upgrade :-)

This reminds me of a story from a snooty British audio mag in the 1980's - an integrated amp was reviewed and viciously panned as being horrible, one area the reviewers focused on was the lack of weight of the unit. The manufacturer then changed the model number slightly, did not change any of the electronics, bolted a brick inside and resubmitted for review. The magazine had nothing but glowing praise for how great the unit was and how the mfg'er had learned and built a better amp!

Needless to say when the truth was revealed the magazine suffered incredibly and disappeared within a year!

You're right about the brick (size of toroid). Is that toroid reflective of the power delivered to the speakers? You have to look at the toroid in conjunction with the output components and how they are biased. And it's not about the size of the output caps either. Most don't understand that too much capacitance is not a good thing.

But it's not all about average or dynamic output power. It's about having enough technical knowledge of the audio domain to know how to build those things into the design that will evoke emotion from the listener. Some stuff is very basic that most designers get wrong anyway. Stuff like noise-free design for example. Other stuff is gained by experience - like the use of certain kinds of component materials. It's also about having the time to iterate through research and testing.

It boils down to who do you trust because we really don't have good specs to guide us and anyone can put out a spec sheet in this industry that may not reflect reality.

Snazzed, smart man! For you I really recommend M100v4. I have them as well as M5s and M3s and love them.

I agree Axiom ought to offer pre/pros but they have to be at the same price point as a mid-grade receiver. And they have to be pristine.