Andrew.....hayelp!

[Gerrardasnails]

I emailed Denon, when I thought it was my Sony receiver's fault, to see if the Denon AVR2808 would be able to handle what I want, this is their response I received this morning, "Yes, if you take the pre-outs to your stereo amp, set the level or if it has a power amp option please select it.".

 

[John Duncan]

I'm sure Sony would say the same. And Yamaha. And Onkyo. That's just how it's supposed to work. I just don't get it......

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andrew/John, me again! I've ordered a Niles DPS-1 (£48 delivered). I've just had a thought though. On the back of the Creek, there are output terminals for preamp and tape. I haven't tried the preamp terminal as it's never been mentioned to me before but I just wanted to check to see if you thought it would be worthwhile? Cheers.

 

[John Duncan]

Can't think of any way those could be used to achieve what you're looking for, tbh. Still haven't hooked mine up btw, was out last night. Will try a few combinations over the weekend with the amps I have lying around.

 

[John Duncan]

This just in:

I tried this with two amps, my Creek and an old Arcam. Was going to try the receiver unit from my Denon mini but the spring clip speaker outputs put me off.

I set the Yamaha Receiver to have no centre, and hooked up the PMCs at the front and some Diamonds at the rear. Front left and right preouts into a spare input on each amp, played some music and matched levels so that volume was the same whether from the Yamaha or the external amp.

Results - both worked fine. The Creek had to be ramped right up to match levels, presumably because it's a passive preamp and the volume needs to go quite high anyway. The Arcam was lower - 10 o'clock maybe, but then I wasn't messing around with speaker levels on the Yamaha so probably not optimal.

I then plugged a DVD player in, played a movie briefly, and all seemed well. The one thing I'm worried about is that I did not try this with a centre (haven't got one, though I suppose I could put in a diamond), which could skew results considerably, since 70% of what was going to the front pair would go elsewhere - how much this would affect them, I can't say.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Thanks John. I just spent near £200 on a centre so not much point me trying it without it. I've ordered the gadget Andrew mentioned. I will live with it until I buy a new receiver and then if it doesn't work with the new receiver, I know it's the Creek's fault and I will just continue with the little switcher from Niles Audio. Cheers again.

 

[John Duncan]

Sounds like the way to go. Bit of a pain, but hey.