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April 10, 2013 - 4:00pm
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How is this setup?
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Its kind of hard to asses the quality of those older speakers, but I suspect they are fairly good if still in good condition. Mission has become rather low-quality stuff in recent years, but yours were made before that happened.
My guess would be that the weakest part of your system from the standpoint of sound quality would be the Yamaha receiver.
I would suggest that you consider a Harman-Kardon 3490 stereo receiver to replace it. That is a very good-sounding unit that you should be able to get for under $500.
Or if you want an AVR with more channels, the Harman-kardon 2650 would be the one to get.
Either one should be a definite improvement over the Yamaha.
I would probably be looking more towards the 2650 seeing as I do need the HDMI ports on that one for my video needs. Why would changing the receiver affect my audio quality, just the quality of the parts? Does it produce its advertised wattage? I'm very new to what makes a good home audio set up good as you can see.
The vast majority of HT receivers have most of the money invested in "bells and whistles" and very little put into the power supply and amplifer circuits. Most of them have pathetically small power supplies that don't even come close to delivering the power implied in their phony so-called "specs".
The Yamaha falls into that category (along with most others).
Two brands that go about it differently are Cambridge Audio and Harman-Kardon.
They put in larger power supplies that can actually drive more than two speakers without running out of current and distorting on peaks. The result is better sound quality.
I only plan on using a two speaker plus subwoofer system and have all my devices already hooked up to my yamaha reciever which does have a pre out could I not just get a 2 channel amp instead of getting a whole new receiver?
If I were to get a HK that would suit my needs would be more around $700-800 where an emotiva amp that would suit my speakers would only be 350$ or is that just a terrible idea all together?
If you were only going to operate a 2.1 system, the thing I would recommend is the Harman-Kardon 3490 stereo receiver. It has no HDMI switching though, so that is a problem in your case.
It is available for around $400 and has dedicated subwoofer output jacks and 120 watts per channel of REAL power (twice what your Yamaha will actually do). It even has a phono preamp built in in case you ever wanted a turntable; but no HDMI.
If you have front channel preouts, however, an external 2-channel power amplifier may be a good idea. But I don't see anything for less than $700-800, and the audio quality of the Yamaha preamp is still going to limit you.
The Harman-kardon 2650 receiver is around $600 from Amazon, and that should be a one-box answer for you. It has lots of power and all the bells and whistles you could ask for, so that is possibly the best deal for you.
The Emotiva XPA-200 is a good 150 wpc power amp for $500. A 360 VA toroidal transformer and 90,000 uF of capacitance means it has plenty of guts for growl.
Actually, the UPA-200 is only $350 and has more power than you need.
If you want to keep your existing receiver, that would be good.
But adding an amp to the existing receiver will not improve the sound quality as much as going to the 2650 reciver IMO.
So I had some of my audiophile friends over and turns out that the missions had almost no treble anymore all I was getting was accurate mids so I put them in the closet and went shopping for some new speakers. Ended up getting a pair of focal chorus 716v for 1100$ down from 1600$. Now where I work (Best Buy) we have a few clearance HK receivers so would buying one of these floor models dirt cheap be a good idea? (Not sure of the models will go look tomorrow). They are most likely the AVR2650 and the AVR2600. Also have an open item HK3490 that I could get for about 400$ is there a way I could get another device that would let me get the audio from a Playstation 3, Apple TV, Laptop, and my desktop computer with a creative sound card hooked up to the HK3490 and get video for all these to a HDTV with only two hdmi inputs for video?
Well you can connect the Ps3 and apple Tv through Optical cable into the receiver (although that means you lose Dts Master HD Audio and Dolby True HD Audio on blurays as they only work through Hdmi 1.3 and up...but you still get all the usual Dvd audio formats). If the laptop is Macbook pro you can get digital audio out tyhrough the headphones socket with the help of this:
http://www.amazon.com/Recoton-Fiber-Optic-Toslink-Adapter/dp/B0002MQGRM
For the desktop you can use analog cable maybe? (stereo jack on one end and Rca stereo on the other end).