How much

[abefroeman]

How much power

One point that's rarely mentioned when comparing "watts" is the speaker itself. An 8 ohm speaker with a mid 90's dB (spl) rating will play plenty loud in the largest rooms with budget surround receivers, while a 4 ohm, mid 80's dB speaker may struggle in a moderate sized room with a higher end AVR.

This is a quote from Buckeyefan 1 from the all channels driven fallacy thread.

When looking at the specs of my speakers, how much power would you say I would need?

Sensitivity 89db
Nominal impedance 4-8Ω
Power rating 15-150watts

 

[Seth=L]

The NAD is adequate, it can handle the lower impedances and has decent headroom.

 

[abefroeman]

Sorry that was a poorly written question,

Yes the NAD is quite adequate, it plays much louder than I would care to listen, but I want to get some MS902 bookshelf speakers for 5.1 and am looking for a receiver.

Thinking about the Yamaha RVX 659 or something similar.

 

[Seth=L]

The Yamaha would be adequate as well, and as an added plus it has preouts so you can add an amp if you desired. You could also use the NAD as an amp for the front channels if you wanted.

 

[mike c]

aside from the speaker specs, we need the size of the room, distance from speakers to the listening position, average SPL at the listening position when listening ... and the type of music

 

[abefroeman]

aside from the speaker specs, we need the size of the room, distance from speakers to the listening position, average SPL at the listening position when listening ... and the type of music

I like the speakers less than 10' away. And the room is currently an apartment, but we won't set up the suround sound in there. We are buying a house in the next 18 months she suprisingly wants it to have a HT room in the basement. I am really liking the idea of this house, she has already agreed to turn one of the bedrooms or one stall of the garage into a putting green.

Edit: Forgot about type of music. It will mostly be for movies, I have not done a lot of critical music listening.

 

[jcPanny]

Yamaha receiver w/ 4 ohm speakers

For what is worth, I was using my Yamaha HTR-5860 (comparable to RX-V659) to drive a pair of 4 ohm Onix Ref 1's at moderate levels. I wouldn't recommend connecting seven 4 ohm speakers to a lower end Yamaha, but you should be fine with five 6-8 ohm speakers. These receivers run hot (even when using it as a pre-pro) so make sure you have good ventalation.

 

[mike c]

I'd say an amp for the front left and right (and maybe the center) would be sufficient enough depending on your budget ...

since we don't know the room size and speaker distance in your future new house, I'd play it safe and get at least a 200wpc amp ... but the wattage is not important, it's the amps capability in handling dips in ohms. any decent amp maker will be able to handle that.

how much is your budget?

check out: rotel, parasound ... behringer

 

[davidtwotrees]

Buy a seperate amp to augment your receiver.

I have Mordaunt Short 500 series speakers with the same ohm rating as yours, I believe. If you buy a spereate amp for those front mordys it will really make them sing. I paid around $500 shipped for a used Acurus A250 and it was well worth it.

 

[abefroeman]

One option I was looking at was to get a pre/pro and 3 NAD 2155s (same amp as my receiver but without the receiver guts).

2155s can be had for $50 to $100 on ebay. But then I would need to find a cheap pre/pro with 5.1 inputs, and bass management. Possibly a used Outlaw Audio 950 off ebay. They go for about $250.

So that’s about $450-$500 worth of electronics. Do you guys think there would be an appreciable difference with this over the 659 to justify paying 2x the price?

 

[abefroeman]

On the other hand, this is mostly for home theater where I will have an 80hz crossover and an external amp for the sub, so perhaps I dont need anything more than the 659.

 

[Pyrrho]

One option I was looking at was to get a pre/pro and 3 NAD 2155s (same amp as my receiver but without the receiver guts).

2155s can be had for $50 to $100 on ebay. But then I would need to find a cheap pre/pro with 5.1 inputs, and bass management. Possibly a used Outlaw Audio 950 off ebay. They go for about $250.

So that’s about $450-$500 worth of electronics. Do you guys think there would be an appreciable difference with this over the 659 to justify paying 2x the price?

Probably not. As already mentioned (by someone else), if you needed to, you could use the NAD you already have to power the main speakers.

 

[abefroeman]

sounds like a plan