Pre amp outs on receivers

[svenoaks]

Hello, I have an old school Yamaha pre amp (C80) and power amp (M85) for simple two channel stereo. Long story short the pre amp has tons of hum in it (its always had some problems since I've bought it off ebay), and it doesn't seem to be a ground problem or anything like that.

I want to buy a receiver with pre amp outs such as the Onkyo TX-SR706 or similar and use the FRONT pre amp outs to power the M85. I then want the option of adding surround channels from the amplification section of the receiver at a later time.

A couple questions - reading the manual for the receiver online worries me - it states to connect ALL the pre amp outputs to the power amplifier. Will the receiver be able to amplify the surround speakers while sending the fronts to the M85?

Also, is there an option to mix everything from a surround source down to the front speakers only so that all the audio information is passing through the M85? This would be for before I set up the surround speakers and for stereo only sources.

Thanks for any insight.

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum!

You can hook up just the front left/right preouts to your amp, use the amp to power your front left/right speakers, and use the Onkyo TX-SR706 to power the surround speakers when you get some. The preouts are always on, so they aren't affected by which speakers you have connected to the receiver.

As for converting surround sound sources to stereo, the Onkyo TX-SR706 can convert all signals to stereo except for the analog multichannel inputs.