Help a newbie with questions...please.

[admin_exported]

OK, I am fairly new to all this Home Cinema stuff and am about to embark on buying some kit. I have a couple of questions that I hope someone will be able to help with.

I currently have some fairly good hifi. I have an Arcam cd73 player which is pretty good. I have an old arcam 7r amp which I bought in 98 which is still great. Coupled with these are some Accoustic Energy 109s which I am really pleased with.

The questions are these.

1) could I buy something like the Sony £400 reciever which gets great reviews, and replace the 7R amp.

2) Could I use the AE speakers as Front speakers and get rears, a centre and a sub to go along with the AE's or just start again to a certain extent,

3) would the sony amp be as good as the outgoing 7R

Thanks for your help. I promise to reply to other peoples posts if I have any info and not just ask questions all the time.

Bayf

 

[Simon Lucas]

Always nice to see a list. I like to list my replies.

1) Yes, you could.

2) If you like your 109s, retain them as your front left and right speakers. It's important that your centre speaker is tonally similar to the 109s, so I'd suggest having a word with Acoustic Energy to see if any of its current products would be a sympathetic match. It might be less aggro than auditioning a load of speaker packages. The rear speakers and subwoofer are less critical in terms of tonality-matching.

3) Not a chance. The Sony's an excellent product on its own terms, but it can't hold a candle to a late-90s Arcam 7R when it comes to music-making. I reckon you'd need to think about chucking at least £800 at a multichannel amplifier if you want to approach the Arcam's stereo sound.

 

[Anonymous]

Excellent Response, thanks Simon. I am particularly pleased with the answer to 3) since I think I would have got quite emotional if I had to replace that amp, since I have always been so pleased with it, and I have had it for over 8 years.

The problem is this then: I would want to have the speakers in a 2 channel set up from the 7r when listening to CD's, but also the front left and right, when watching TV, which are still likely to be supplied by the Sony or something similiar.

 

[Simon Lucas]

When you talk about using the speakers to watch TV, are you just talking about listening in two channels or multichannel? If you want to run your 109s off two different amplifiers, this could be a fairly long and involved answer...

 

[Anonymous]

The original plan I had was to replace the Arcam 7r and replace with the Sony STR-DA1200ES. This new amp would do the work for everything, I understood (but this could be wrong) that when playing CD's the amp would "know" and just send it out through the 2 front speakers. When watching TV or a DVD etc, would be in full surround sound. I was planning to keep the 2 AE109s that I have for the fronts, and purchase a centre, sub and two rears.

Now you have suggested that the 7R is much better for CD's than the Sony would be, so I am in the postition, of needing to know whether the 2 amps (The sony and the Arcam) could both power the speakers depending on what I was listening to. I hope this makes sense!

Finally, if the above is pretty much not possible, or if I would be better with just a full set of surround speakers what would you recommend. I was planning (because my only guide is the Magazine) to get a pretty much full sony set up. Sony STR-DA1200ES, Sony RDR-HXD860, Sony KDL-40W2000.

Regards

Bayf.

P.S. TV choice might change today having just bought the latest mag.