Home theater Question...How will buying a 2 two channel amp improve the sound? or even buying a 5 channel amp?

Question

What will happen to the sound, a major change? or not so much? I mean a very good amp (amps if necessary)

Answer 1

You didn't specify what you trying to improve from. The basic idea behind your question is that seperate amps, also known as discrete amps, or pre-pro systems, will deliver a higher quality amplification of the sound. They aslo cost a lot more, because you also have to have a pre-processor. If you have a receiver, you can use the pre-out on the receiver for this, and thus save from having to buy that part new. I am firmly in the camp of "speakers come first". As far as distortion goes, the amplifier introduces only 0.08% total harmonic distortion at normal litening levels, while speakers color your sound in many,many hard to represent ways. Poor speakers, even some that have classy labels and fancy packaging can introduce as much as 10% distortion in the lower and mid lower frequency ranges. Put you money into speakers.

Now a key point to the above is the "normal listening levels". When you start to crank up the volume a poor quality amp runs out of power very quickly especially with todays digital music and movie soundracks. If you have a good quality receiver, which decodes digital well and produced great analog output, by all means beef up the power with an external amp. In a room 20x20x8 (hmmm, the exact dimentions of my home theater) and listening to an action movie loud like at the public theater, you will need 150W per channel rated power minimum to get quality, the more the better. In amplifiers it is all about power, also described as head room, which will prevent clipping as the main source of amp introduced distortion.

Answer 2

You really dont need tons of power for a HT system.

With a music system, people want to blast the sound so it sounds good -- in the next room.

A HT system surrounds 1-3 chairs with a ring of speakers. You dont want too much volume so you dont need much power. This is really true if you have 5 monitor-style speakers and a self-powered subwoofer.

But there is a few exceptions:

- Do you have huge tower speakers with woofers?
- Do you have very sensitive, audiophile quality speakers ($1,500 or more each)
- Do you want a good music & HT system?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, a power amp could help a bit.

Does your receiver have RCA jacks for left/right/center/rear outputs? If not - an amp wont work because you need line-level signals (usually with RCA jacks) to feed the amps. And you want this to come from the receiver so the volume control works. So you may be talking about a new receiver.

If you are going to get 'into' this, study up on "Pre-Amp" and "amps". This type of system takes the electronics part of a receiver (with the input jacks, volume control, source selector, etc) and puts this in 1 box called the "Pre Processor". Then you MUST add outboard amps to drive speakers.

But the cool part is you can now swap out amps, go to mono-blocks, etc.

Check out a site: www.outlawaudio.com. This company has separates for HT systems that wont break the bank.

Answer 3

They dont incredibly sell 5 channel amps on the shops... me in my opinion ive by no skill even considered a 5 cahnnel amp. if your attempting to connect door audio equipment (Voice) get a 4 channel amp around 4 hundred to 600 watts. if your attempting to connect subs get a a million channel amp (mono) around perchance 600 to one thousand watts. Why could you like a 5 channel amp? email me what precisely you love to do.