Connect new stereo amp to AV receiver (Advise welcome)

[buijenre]

Hello All,

Last year I have bought my first real Hi-FI setup, mainly to find a good balance between AV for watching movies and listening to stereo music.

I bough a Tannoy speaker setup and paired it to the Marantz SR6007 AV receiver because I found the stereo quality was also decent.

My Speakers are:

Tannoy DC6T <- (These for front stereo) http://www.whathifi.com/review/tannoy-revolution-dc6t

Tannoy DC4LCR

Tannoy DC6

Tannoy SUB1001

Now although I like the sound I know that for listening to just stereo music I can get much better sound out of the DC6T's so what I would like to do is to buy a seperate stereo amp and hook it up somehow. But I don't know how and also I would like to still be able to use the same setup for watching movies.

When I play music I mainly play FLAC so my question is, what is the best device to be able to reach my FLAC collection on my NAS (Network) and get the most out of my DC6T's by pairing it with some kind of Stereo amp (that can play FLAC?).

I've heard people saying I can connect a device to the PRE-OUT on my Marantz or something but as you can hear, although I love my music I am not the most audio technical person so I hope someone can help me out with selecting a device that will do the job. I've been pointed towards DAC's and Audio streamers but realy I am lost now

My budget is about $700 for a device that will be able to play my FLAC collection and get's me the best sound out of my Tannoys.

I hope someone can help me out, it's much appreciated.

Kind regards.

Rens

 

[gurjitsidhu]

I would sell your AV amp and buy a £1000+ AV amp which will also do very good stereo music.

I cant tell the difference (that much) between my yamaha AV amp and my Yamaha Stereo amp. Yamaha are well known for their av amps having good stereo output

 

[buijenre]

Hi,

I do not want to sell my AV receiver and buy a new one, it's pretty good for movies.

I'm just looking for an extra device that does the job described above.

But I don't know if it even can be done, playing flac on a stereo amp...

 

[davedotco]

The problem is connecting speakers.

Unless you are prepared to plug and unplug your speakers it is hard to see how you can use two different amplifiers in this situation. Sure you can add a power amp to the pre-outs and use it to drive the front speakers but the pre-amp section of the A/V reciever will still be in the circuit so improvements will be modest.

One of the reasons a lot of people like to keep their music and A/V systems completely separate, not always possible though.

 

[matt49]

What about some kind of switch? I haven't checked this lately, but I recall you could buy something tolerably well made from e.g. QED or Beresford. The crucial thing is that the switch must be designed so that both amps can't supply power to the speakers at the same time.

 

[amcluesent]

>When I play music I mainly play FLAC <

Are you already using the inbuilt music streamer on Marantz SR6007? It should be OK streaming FLAC from a NAS which us running a good music server like Minimserver.

To meaningfully improve on the Marantz SR6007 just for stereo, you'll need to get a decent amp and it must have a 'fixed gain' or 'bypass' input otherwise you'll be tinkering with two volume controls which is bad news.

Anyhow, the set-up is simple enough -

+ Connect front pre-outs from Marantz SR6007 to fixed-gain input of 2-chainnel amp

+ Move front speaker connections from Marantz SR6007 to stereo amp

+ Turn on and select fixed gain on input selector on amp

+ Re-run the set-up process on the Marantz SR6007 (I assume it has some automatic process with a microphone)

+ That should be it!

Of course you could add a dedicated music streamer to the stereo amp like Marantz NA7004 which may improve on the DACs within the SR6007.

 

[davedotco]

>When I play music I mainly play FLAC <

Are you already using the inbuilt music streamer on Marantz SR6007? It should be OK streaming FLAC from a NAS which us running a good music server like Minimserver.

To meaningfully improve on the Marantz SR6007 just for stereo, you'll need to get a decent amp and it must have a 'fixed gain' or 'bypass' input otherwise you'll be tinkering with two volume controls which is bad news.

Anyhow, the set-up is simple enough -

+ Connect front pre-outs from Marantz SR6007 to fixed-gain input of 2-chainnel amp

+ Move front speaker connections from Marantz SR6007 to stereo amp

+ Turn on and select fixed gain on input selector on amp

+ Re-run the set-up process on the Marantz SR6007 (I assume it has some automatic process with a microphone)

+ That should be it!

Of course you could add a dedicated music streamer to the stereo amp like Marantz NA7004 which may improve on the DACs within the SR6007.

Nicely put, an excellent explanation of what I alluded to above. however I remain unsure just how big an improvement this will be unless you can disble most og the pre-amp functions in the reciever.

I have often found this to be a limiting factor, though it will vary from amp tp amp.

 

[amcluesent]

Off the top of my head, the only really good quality stereo amp with inbuilt music streamer and a fixed-gain input to integrate with multi-channel AV is NaimUniti 2

Would certainly need careful audtion, Naim and Tannoy aren't often seen together.

NaimUniti 2 totally blows OP's budget, of course, but I'd be wondering if $700 for even a plain-Jane stereo amp would be a noticable improvement on the AV Receiver. That money may be better spent on room treatment of bass traps etc.

 

[the record spot]

If you can find one new, I'll mention my amp below, the Onkyo TX-NR818, or indeed any of that range from the 818 upwards. Performance is great with my Tannoys, sound quality is really very hard to fault and I've had loads of stereo amps over the years. Bi-amp the speakers and your're off. The Onkyo will handle FLAC too.

 

[Ben123]

This is all you need. I have one and it allows me complete flexibility between 2 channel and AV.

http://www.beresford.me/products/TC-7220.html

All the best.