home cinema amp???

B

bullybash

Guest
Hi
I am thinking of purchasing a home cinema amp to boost my system. I am not sure which way to turn. I presently own an intergrated amp which is many years old but its superb -Pioneer A400, CD player NAD 541i(did have an arcam alpha 8 but it packed up last year,not a lover of arcam after that.The Nad is much better.A rega planner 3 turntable with denon DL110 cartridge and bi-wired mission 763 speakers. I have just splashed out on panny PE30 plasma. I want to keep my present hi-fi system so how do I go about linking ahome cinema amp as I still want my speakers to go through my pioneer amp when I am listening to music etc. Obvoiusly I would like to use my missions as front speakers in home cinema set up with a view to add surround sound at a later date.
I am confused reagrding set up. I am also thinking of pioneer 575 or 470 DVD player for prog scan etc.Can anyone please advise me and reccomend an amp or better set up and how you go about linking up all cables etc.Thanks
 
If you want to keep the Pioneer and Missions there are 2 options.

1. Connect the pre out front left and right signals from an AV amp into a spare input on the Pioneer. The idea being that when you want to watch a movie you would have to select the correct input on the Pioneer amp, set the volume control to a fixed high level. Essentially you'd be using the Pioneer as a power amp - well kind of.....

2. The other option is to get a switch box that would sit between the AV amp and the Pioneer and enable you to select which one is connected to the speakers. QED do the MA19 (http://www.qed.co.uk/acc/acc.html)

I've been using a setup the same as 1. above for a while now (Sony AV amp, Cyrus stereo amplifiers and B&W speakers).

Regards
 
Having attempted this route in the past, I can tell you its a right pain. You will also fall foul of the 'centre speaker must be similar to your main stereo pair' scenario. The reason why its a pain is that a dedicated AV amp is able to set all the speaker levels to your preference, then you just turn the amp to the required volume.

My advice, separate systems ( I am advertising a cheap starter sytem, which is the route I took to trial 5.1). Nice amp by the way, they are pretty rare now.
 
I do this and it is not that hard really.
I had a little stereo system with a nad 370 amp and some mission 780se speakers with an arcam cd player connected to the nad.
Nothing special but I wanted to keep the 2 channel when I moved into av. I then did exactly what Happylad suggested and bought an av amp and use the preouts so that the nad drives the front channels and the av amp runs the centre, rears and sub.
All you do to manage the volume controls is choose a position on your stereo amp, say 12 oclock, and use that as your master volume when you balance all the speakers on your av amp.
You only have to do this once and then whenever you watch a movie, put the stereo amp volume to 12 oclock and away you go.
Just remember to turn the volume down when using your stereo amp in 2 channel mode.
My sub is is connected to both amps, lo level phono to my av amp and hi level speaker cable to my 2 channel amp speaker B connection.
Easy peasy!
 

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