AV Receiver Underpowered?

"I checked out the Emotiva site and saw they partnered with Sherbourn. They have a Sherbourn PT-7020A on sale. It has the pre-outs so I could "add" an amplifier later."

Butrflynlambie,

The Sherbourn PT-7020A is a preamp/processor so you would have to "add" an amp at the same time. No onboard amplifiers. But with the discounted price of $399.00, adding a quality mid-fi 5 or 7 channel amp like the Emotiva XPA-5 V2, could be possible for the budget minded.

Bill

I did something similar with my Denon *BUT*, I also had to upgrade to a Denon that had pre-out (don't buy an amp and be disappointed you can actually hook it up). I had to go up to a 3313 to get pre-out (nothing lower had pre-out) and bought an Emotiva amp. I had my earlier Denon hooked up with bi-amp, which does push some more power to the speakers (at least for stereo). Switching to Emotiva xpa-5 to power the surround system made a HUGE difference (no longer bi-amped though).

Hi Kriskdf - I spent some time reviewing the manual and searching. I confirmed the EXT IN. ports are not pre-outs on my AVR 1908. I need to replace it.

All -

I don't mind doing separate pre and amp. But am stupid about a comparison between it and an av receiver. Or an amplifier of other order. I would like to spend around $1k.. which is yes budget minded.

any drawbacks with this setup
UMC-200 600.00
UPA-700 80X7 500.00

an XP-5 is another 500.00 and less two channels. It has more watts, but I am quite clueless on the numbers. I am not sure if the 80watts would be sufficient for my application or not.

I like the idea of the separate amplifier as the standards have changed fairly quick in the last five years.

Thanks for everyone's comments. Ultimately I am looking to move into my new house and would like to finally setup my system with the speakers mounted on the walls, rather than sitting on end tables. Was hoping to move the electronics to the basement. I have little money left over for this project.

My post from before was wrong. I did a search for some images of your amp so I could look at the connections on the back. I didn't realize it but the pic I found was of a different Denon.

What are your speaker level settings. Have you calibrated your system using an spl meter? All of my
Speaker settings are around -4 range to hit 75 on the meter