How to unleash the optimum power of a receiver?

Fiddle about with speaker placement, that will result in the best, and cheapest way to improve the sound of your system. Generally, if you can get the speakers away from the back and side walls at least 2-3 feet, this will help in damping early reflections, allowing for a deeper, broader soundtage and more pinpoint accuracy in the placement of the instruments and vocalists.

-RW-

Speaker location and some room treatment could provide a great deal of improvement. One common mistake is the position of the three front speakers. Many people pay no attention to the plane of these three speakers which can throw their timing way off. Another glaring issue is that most instruction manuals show the front left and right speakers drastically toed in and this may the case with some situations. With room correction off or flat, try centering the speakers baffles on the same plane then slowly toeing in the front right and left speakers in equally. You should notice a sense of the dialog becoming more or less spaced apart. The goal is to get the illusion that the dialogue is coming though the screen yet still maintaining location.

This repositioning of the fronts may require an adjustment of the two side speakers. Beginning at just a foot or two in front of the listening position and moving them back slowly to just behind the listening position until you find their optimum location. This location can be trickier than you might think. I've experienced some films were their location seemed better just behind and others directly across form the listening position. The side speaker location is very subjective. After these location adjustments run room correction again.

Limiting your speakers low frequency and using a subwoofer can make a huge improvement. I would guess most receivers would benefit from matching speakers that stay above 4 ohms and have high sensitivity ratings.

I think the 2805 is a 7.1 receiver without the latest codecs? These will become more important as the media ramps up their production methods. There will always be a newer better component out there. For now it seems the hardware is one giant step ahead of media production. If your happy with what you have already then no worries.

if your receiver has preouts, which i think it does, you can add a two or three channel power amp for your fronts/center--typically, this will sound much more powerful and cleaner than using the internal amps in your receiver, which are wimpy with all channels driven.

"So far they sound great".

So what's the problem? Give the forum more information and you'll get more specific answers.

Thank you all for the generous answers. And thanks brewed for the question.

I was just wondering how I would know if my receiver had performed its best. Is there any specific measure that could tell me if the receiver has reached its optimum power?

Also, I had to pump the master volume to around -25dB to -20dB to get to level that I can enjoy. What is the max volume a Denon AVR-2805 could go?

Thanks, again.