upgrade sherwood r-956?

[dwilsondvm]

I am currently moving houses and my new living room has klipsch reference in-walls 6.5" speakers. My current amplifier is a sherwood newcastle r-956. I for some reason feels that i'm not getting good surround sound decoding even though i have set my surrounds using a db meter.... some activity in rear speakers but not much. Haven't tried any dts material just dd 5.1 and blue ray.

Anyways, the new house does have an unfinished room which i am turning into a theater, but my real question is looking for opinions on this old 956. Would it be much benefit to upgrading just for my living room? If i did it wouldn't be anything extreme since i'm putting most of my money into theater room. I have been looking around on ebay and seems like there are some good deals on used equipment from last season but my receiver was around 2003?

What are your thoughts?... will tackle home theater equipment at later date...thanks

 

[markw]

What;s the problem with the receiver that you think it needs upgrading? I'l still using a Denon from that time period and it still sounds great. Of course, I'm not using the same speakers you will be.

I'll tell ya right now... no receiver is gonna sound good through those speakers, at least for serious listening. Background, maybe, but not for focused listening.

FWIW, there's never much activity in the rear/surround speakers in most movies.

 

[GranteedEV]

yeah, not many movies are mixed to really take advantage of 5.1 or 7.1. They usually just use surrounds for rain. and wind. kind of lame.

Even some excellent surround effect movies like House of Flying Daggers can be somewhat underwhelming based on your expectations.

 

[dwilsondvm]

No real problem with receiver just wondering how much technology had changed since i bought it and if for the price of a used one I would make a big jump in decoding or power output.

I do realize the speakers could be better but they are there and in lucky enough to be getting a future dedicated theater room in new house so I'm not gonna fight wife over current klipsch in living room and make the best of them

Thanks for replies... I guess my Newcastle isn't junk by current standards for the given speakers!

 

[markw]

Most of the advancement has been in fearutes as opposed to audio performance. One area that times have changed is with HDMI, but even then, it's not a show-stopper not having it.