Can I Improve My Sound

[Mike Delvaux]

Improving Sound#

I have a Harmon Kardon AVR65RDS reciever (5.1/DTS ,70watts per channel)am I to beleive that by adding another amp say Arcam alpha 8 to the preouts it will improve the sound quality of DVDs. I understand CD quality will be improved because the cd player will be connected to the amp. Will I still be able to use the AVR65 to control all the volumes,or will I have two volumes to adjust ?
Thanks for your help
Mike.

 

[MarkE19]

In my experience the sound for DVD's will not be improved by adding an integrated amp. The reason for this is that normally the quality loss is due to the preamp stage on an AV receiver not being that good. You totaly bypass the receiver for music and use the higher quality preamp stage on the integrated HiFi amp, but still use the receiver for multichannel DVD playback. The better quality amp might make some improvement or the larger headroom given to the other channels on the receiver by not useing the front L/R amps also helps if like on the Denon receivers the power supply is under powered to drive all the channels at full power.
If you do go for an Arcam amp (and some others) you will be able to control the volume from the receiver because the Arcam has a processor mode that bypasses the preamp when fed from an AV system. If you get an amp without this feature the receiver will still control the volume, but you will also need to set the volume on the amp to a set point to get all the channels balenced coreectly and then remember to turn it back down before listening to a CD etc.

Mark.

 

[Mike Delvaux]

Thanks Mark I had a feeling that would be the case,I think ill stick with what ive got for a while.
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Pioneer 737dvd,Arcam alpha 7 cd, Harmon kardon avr65, Hitachi pd423000, Celestion a2 fronts, Castle keep centre, Mission 771 rears, Yamaha yts sw160 sub.