Moving to separates


Does anyone have an experience they'd like to share about going from just an AVR or integrated to using external amp(s)?  My Integra AVR has 100 W per channel (class AB), all channels driven, and sounds very good, so it is not clear to me that there is any advantage to connecting its preouts to a separate amp.  Might be a total waste of money.  Please mention your specific equipment.  Thanks!

skeptikal

@OP. If you are not interested in two channel audio, I would leave things as is. Congratulations on your room treatment. You are losing some of the benefit of it by having furniture covered in reflective materials and also the very large table between the couches. I'm presuming you move the monitor on the arm out of the way when listening to music.

Audio is audio and video is video. Putting 2 channel through a video system is a  big compromise. Now if you are talking 2 channel audio, an integrated amp will be more cost effective (and save space) since there are less boxes and cables, but separates will provide more flexibility, and probably offer the highest potential power output with separate monoblocks if your speakers or room requires it.

Well it took me a year to buy a separate amp, on account of I had to buy a new house first.  Built a home theater in the basement, with acoustics as a priority.

The amp is a VTV 7 channel class D with Hypex modules.  It is 700 W into 4 ohms for the front 3 channels, and 250 W for the 4 surround channels. As I was kind of expecting, it was not a huge notch up in sound quality improvement.  A notch to be sure, just not huge.  I guess the Integra's internal amps were getting the job done pretty well.  But if I ever decide to upgrade my Arendal 1723's to speakers that are hard to drive, I'll be ready.

@parkergetdean  It's 33% home theater use.  But even for music I like surround sound.  Occasionally I will switch to stereo but not for long because it loses that fullness and ambience that I've come to love.  And I have a lot of 5.1 music in my collection.  For stereo music, the upmixer in Kodi does a good job.