Question about hooking up yamaha rx-861 and rotel power amp ra-985

[jjahshik32]

I just have a question, is it better to have them both hooked up together or just me using the yamaha alone?? Also if it is better to use them together, how do I go about doing this?

Sorry i'm very new at this..

[Briz vegas]

Receivers, and Yamaha in particular, have been notorious for claiming power output based on one channel driven. 7 by 155 watts was likely to be 155watts for any one of those 7 channels alone. Have 7 channels running and the power per channel could drop very dramatically. Rotels claim to fame is their belief in conservative specifications (often well above what the spec sheet said) and big beefy power supplies. Yamaha were hugely optomistic in specs and small on power supplies.

Based on this general information it would be well worth your while using your 100watt Rotel to power your front speakers. Only the Yamaha is going to do digital processing so you would need to use that as your preamp/processor for the system and as the power amp for all but your front two speakers.

On the back of you Rotel there are some jumper connectors between the preamp section and the power amp (main) section of the amplifier. Remove these jumpers and connect the Yamaha's preout for the front 2 channels to the "main in" left and right on the Rotel using a good quality RCA interconnect cable.

Your front two speakers should be hooked up to the Rotel and the remainder are hooked up to the Yamaha. Both amps need to be on for HT operation.

[jjahshik32]

Thank you so much for the advice, I really appreciate it!!

I hooked up my 805s to the rotel and tried the it on my yamaha and wow they both sound great but the rotel does sound very nice.

I connected them the way you described and it works, but does that mean I can only control sound of all my speakers *including the 2 fronts* with only the yamaha??

[jjahshik32]

I guess I'd like to know what would I benefit from connecting it this way? Instead of connecting it just all onto my yamaha, is it just the more powerful output??

[Briz vegas]

Benefits
- control
- headroom
- overall sound quality

I gave you the "set and forget" configuration for primarily HT applications.

The Yamaha as preamp/processor is the control center for your system and thats how it should be for a HT system. You have effectively bypassed the preamp stage on the Rotel so that is operates merely as the muscle for the yamaha - all of the front panel controls on the Rotel are part of its preamp section.

If you wanted to run a CD player direct vie the Rotel (music first - keep it simple principle) and a DVD player via the Yamaha you would use a different setup. Reconnect the jumpers and run the Yamaha pre outs into one of the Rotels auxillary inputs.
- For CD replay you just use your CD player, Rotel and speakers as normal
- For DVD replay you need to set your rotel to the aux input and set the volume control to unity gain. This is the volume where the mains match the surrounds and centre speaker. Effectively this is like the "theater pass through" button - but without the simplicity of a simple switch to automatically set the volume to unity gain (volume setting where the preamp section adds no net gain to the signal)

Your 805s are not the most demanding speakers but the above benefits should still be there. If you were running 703 or 804 the difference would be more obvious as they work amps harder. Without the addition power amp these speakers would sound pretty limp with demanding 7.1 material.

[jjahshik32]

oh ok, thanks for clearing that up.

50% of the time I use my setup to watch hdtv through my hd dvr box. The other 50% of the time I use my xbox 360 to watch hddvd movies streamed straight from my mac pro/ playing xbox 360 and ps3 games.