Is this a disaster... Using AV amp with hifi amp!

[martian1]

Any help appreciated.......A friend of mine has bought himself a new Roksan Kandy Amp and Cd player which he loves. This is the problem, he want's to use the Kandy to drive his front pair of speakers coupled with a Marantz 6300 av amp.
I have done this myself with a Audiolab simply taking pre outs from AV amp to hifi amp and switching to av mode on Audiolab when watching films. The Marantz then controls volume levels, this is a handy feature the 8000s has! But the Kandy doesn't.
Now i wouldn't have thought this would be a problem as with my old amp the 8000a you simply set the vol dial to the 12 o'clock position and all the speaker levels roughly matched, all i did then was set speaker levels on the Marantz using video essentials DVD and a sound meter.
My mates problem is that when he runs a test tone through all his speakers [Kandy vol at 12 o'clock] the centre channel and surrounds are quite a bit louder than the fronts! He has said the speaker levels are about the same on the Marantz settings. He doesn't really want to crank the Kandy right up and if he reduces the other speaker levels to much the Marantz may run out of steam. I normally have the Marantz vol at between -15 to -20 for movies but i think my mate might end up pushing his beyond the ZERO mark . Not good!
Any ideas?

[Slugsy]

Hi Martian1

I also have a Roksan Kandy amp (and love it). Yesterday I took delivery of my first ever AV Receiver (Denon 2803) just after having read your post. So I was a little anxious.

Anyway, I connected the front preouts from the Denon to the Line 1 input of the Kandy. Then I went through the "Channel Level" setting process. I had to add a few dB to the front and centre speaker and subtract a few from the rear speakers (since they are closer to the sitting position). It all seemed to work fine. I have some Monitor Audio floor-standers for the front speakers and listening to the battle of Helm's Deep at -10 dB I thought the house would come down!

[ditton15]

Congrats on the 8000s. I have one also, and I agree that its mode switching is just dandy in its dual role as stereo amp and AVpoweramp. I also had the 8000a for which I did the same as you describe in order to give over (partial) volume control to my Denon AVR2802.

I believe that what your friend should do is alter the centre channel and surround settings in the Marantz's set-up menu - which I regret I do not know. Try posting a 'help on setting 5.1 vol levels in Marantz' or as ever if all else fails read the documentation ..

set the centre and surround channels down and the L/R fronts up, I guess.

[martian1]

I think all is ok, went down and had a look at his set up. I have altered the front pair to +8 and all seems ok, although the listening vol has gone from -20 to -12.