Looking to replace Yamaha RX A550 Aventage

[scary]

i made some assumptions in my previous post....

scary, are you only experiencing issues with multi-channel HT (e.g. movies)?

do you normally listen to music in 2 ch mode?

how far are you seated from the front speakers?

are the front & rear surround speakers the same?

how far away from your seating position are the rear speakers?

I should be more clear - I'll answer your questions in the order you asked:
The main issue is with HT, hearing the dialogue clearly.
I go back and forth between 2.2 and 5.2 channels when listening to music. Both sound pretty good.
I sit about 10' away from LCR.
The fronts were are 3 way vented towers with twin 5.5" woofers. A friend built them with off the shelf crossovers, and very well designed cabinets. 8 ohm. They sound very good. I built a pair of vented TM surrounds with the same drivers as my towers (which don't have any identifying labels on then). I bought my first center when I bought the first avr - a Definitive Technology 8040. Maybe ok for a small room, but no good for me. So I built a Swope DIY kit, (3 way with 2 - 6' woofers, and 4'mid) 4ohm. It's better, but not a perfect match with my fronts, and it distorts at the volume I need from it. I sit about 10 feet from the LCR.

I have only been aware of multi channel AV systems since we moved into our new house in March. It's a steep learning curve, and I've made some wrong moves, but I'm getting there. At this point, I want to get a matched LCR, and a receiver that can handle whatever I ask of it. I ordered a Yamaha RX-V781. That was easy enough, but trying to match a center to a pair of fronts with unknown specs is still a mystery. I have my eye on a kit from DiySoundGroup called the 893. I know I would have to build all three fronts the same, but what else can I do with what I have now?

[wkhanna]

i made some assumptions in my previous post....

scary, are you only experiencing issues with multi-channel HT (e.g. movies)?

do you normally listen to music in 2 ch mode?

how far are you seated from the front speakers?

are the front & rear surround speakers the same?

how far away from your seating position are the rear speakers?

[wkhanna]

the OP's issue appears to be related to sensitivity miss-match of the LCR's.

center is a Swope 3 way, nominal 4 Ohm. Left, right and surrounds are 8 ohm

replacing the AVR will not help.
neither will trying to mitigate the problem by adding more power to the channels driving the higher load, imho.
this is not a practical solution.

for HT, the center channel is called upon to do most of the work, dialogue taking up much of the "bandwidth".
also, all front channels should be designed for equivalent performance in order to deliver seamless transitions during full pans from one side to the other in multi-channel mode.

try running the system with the center speaker in phantom mode (e.g., no center channel used)
you may find the audio performance is better using one less channel.

otherwise, you should have LCR's that are matched & designed to work together.

[madmac]

40 feet long !!!??? Holy moly !!!

Since you are not interested in anything other than a simple 5.2 channel setup I would look into a used Rotel AVR.

Performance wise a Rotel will blow away your Yamaha and give you the power and headroom you are looking for. Also, somewhere down the line you might want to get a bigger center channel speaker (3 way with 2 woofers, midrange and tweeter).

[scary]

I bought it less than a year ago to begin building my first HT system. Since my room is large,( 18 X 40) and I need to crank up the volume quite a bit to hear the dialogue, the sound quality begins to drop off. I use 5 channels, and don't plan for 7. Two subs.
Music and HT are about 50/50. My center is a Swope 3 way, nominal 4 Ohm. Left, right and surrounds are 8 ohm. One of my thoughts is to get a receiver with pre-amp outs, so I can add a power amp for LRC. Another option might be to use very high sensitivity speakers, like the 893 series sold by DIYSoundgroup.

I like most of the features of my Yamaha, don't need atmos, 4K, or seven channels.

What is currently the best answer for my problem, considering I would like to keep budget (well) under a kilobuck?