Help: speakers or amp to blame?

You might as well do as the first respondent suggested and hook up your Acurus to your 9NTs. At least you will KNOW how the speakers sound with a beefier amp. If the equipment is too heavy for you, get your wife to do it - ba-da bing!

-RW-

Sorry all Jap receivers suck at 4ohm loads for dynamics.. Try an Arcam or something else that actually has a real amp or just add a real 5 channel amplifier to the preamp outs from your receiver (ATI, Outlaw, Rotel, etc.). Your Acurus was a giant killer in its day especially with the passive preamp.

Does your Pioneer put out 130 wpc X 7 channel simultaneous driven under load or is each channel capable of putting out 130 WPC (as most mass market products are really rated with this approach vs. the much more conservative ratings you will find with higher quality components). The B&K were rated with all channels driven, not just one. I would be suspicious of the Pioneer's real capabilities vs. the rated capabilities. I would also be extremely suspect of "professional" reviews of mass market products. For the most part, these are advertising based reviews.

The previous comments are the only real step you have short of buying something new (ie. an amp) to do what you can do by just moving some existing equipment.

Thanks much for the replies. Beyond reviews, I did some research and had some discussions on some other good boards back then (maybe AVS?, HTForum?), and the so called experts on those sites all recommended this $4000,60lb beast. One was even selling his B&K307 for this unit. Truthfully, I think I'm going to just buy the 803s, see how they work because I want them anyway, and move to a more powerful 5/7 channel amp if I need to (Rotel, older Acurus/Aragon, Adcom, Mac, Sunfire, Anthem, etc)
Thanks again.