QuestionQUESTION: Hi Wayne,
I have a theater setup with a dvd player hooked up to MTX SW1212 150 Watts RMS subwoofer, 8 Pinnacle QP3B 20-100 Watts RMS speakers, and currently a Harman Kardon AVR247 50 watts per channel and the audio is cutting out? We've been told that the amp is underpowered. Is this true and how many watts per channel do you recommend? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
ANSWER: I don't think it's an "underpowered" amp issue. I do have some more specific questions.
1 - Is the audio cutting out only on the DVD player, or on other things connected to the amp?
2 - How do you have the DVD player connected to the amp, digitally (HDMI, coax, or optical), or analog interconnects?
50 watts per channel is typically pretty good. Most people don't realize that those ratings are with the volume at 100%. Normally, 8 channels of 50 watts at full blast will drive most folks from a room. Saying it's underpowered sounds to me like a sales pitch to buy a more expensive receiver.
My gut feeling is that it may be an interconnect issue.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: We don't have anything else besides the dvd player hooked to the amp. Also we are hooked up digitally with coax. Also we have got 3 speakers on each side, the middle of each three are your center channels, so you're running 2 center channels, and those are the ones that are underpowered. We have 6 total speakers for our system. Let me know what you think.
Thanks again!
AnswerI've got a few more questions...
Which speaker outputs are these attached to? I found a picture of the back panel of your receiver online... There's speaker output terminals for a total of 7 speaker cabinets, which one are you NOT using if you've only got 6 hooked up?
If you are using the speaker output labeled "CENTER" to two speaker cabinets, that could be the issue (I'm only "spitballing" here).
What's the speaker impedance of the Pinnacles?
