Thoughts about the Yamaha preamp

[william13]

Yamaha Aventage CX-A5000

For my family room which which is not my theatre room. Room only has 5 speakers. right front, left front, center and rears. The fronts are powered.

Thanks Bill

Looking at Marantz 8801 also but open to ideas..

[jdandy]

Bill.......Why do you feel the 11.2-channel Yamaha CX-A5000 AV preamplifier is necessary. If you are only planning on a 5.1 system, what will the other six channels be doing? Seems like overkill to me.

[william13]

That's what I was thinking Dan but thats what the vendor recommended to me. I don't know if the other channels add much to the cost or not. Other ideas?

[jdandy]

Bill.......Perhaps you can use an Oppo BDP-95 or BDP-105 as your control center. They both offer remote control volume and can be connected directly to power amplifiers.

[william13]

Dan, I would like to explore your out of the box idea. I never considered that. Could I feed analog tabs, cd player, media server, vcr into oppo?

[shully]

Bill,
The oppo is a blu Ray player with decent analogue outputs and good quality digital inputs, however you lose a couple tricks compared to a full blown av receiver:

*no analogue inputs
*not the same variety of room set up options
*balanced outputs to front l/r only

If the cxa5000 is overkill, you could look into something like the rx-a3040. It has pre outs for your powered fronts and can still amplify your surround speakers etc. It's a decent sounding unit although not quite so well balanced as the cxa5000.

[cma29]

Originally Posted by jdandy

Bill.......Why do you feel the 11.2-channel Yamaha CX-A5000 AV preamplifier is necessary. If you are only planning on a 5.1 system, what will the other six channels be doing? Seems like overkill to me.

Wow. How do you even fit that many speakers in a room?