Hi everyone. I am interested in getting an amp for a new house I will be moving into in aug/sept. My current HT setup will most likely be in the finished basment, and I was wondering if the 770 would be a good upgrade with what I have. Here it is:

Preamp: Onkyo TXNR901
Fronts: Polk RTi12's
Rears: Polk RTi4's
Center: Polk CSi3

Right now I am bi-amping the RTi12's with 2 Onkyo M-282's. I do not have any surround rears to finish off a 7.1 setup just yet, but I am planning on getting some here in a little while.

My main concern is that my rears are rated at 125 watts power at 8ohms. I was wondering if the 770 would be too powerful for that?

Thanks for the feedback.

The Model 770 should work very well for yuur setup. Several others in the forum are driving similar Polk speakers with the 770. The rears will be fine.

your setup sounds like you work for Circuit City... or buy there at least. anyway, i would be cautious to ever push 200 watts to the rears (not that that will happen anyway, but be aware of it). all channel stereo and modes like that would deliver more power to the rears, so if you get an amp with 200watts per, just dont crank it up all the way. other than that the other speakers will surely benefit from the "better" power.

Your right, I do work at Circuit City, and got a really good deal on the speakers and reciever through dealer programs. As I stated earlier this setup would be going into a pretty big basement, which is why I was deciding on the upgraded amp power. I do plan on upgrading the rears to another set that can handle 200 watts, along with a sub.

Another question I was going to ask, was about bi-amping the fronts. The setup I am looking into will most likely be a 5.1, maybe upgrading to a 7.1 down the road. Since the RTi12's are rated at 500 watts, do you think it would be smart to use the un-used 2 channels on the amp to bi-amp the fronts to give the 400 watts? Then if I plan to upgrade to 7.1 later, I can either change it back, or purchase 2 M200's

Since you'll have the two extra channels, you can experiment with it to see if it benefits you any. There's been a lot of discussion of bi-amping here over the years. Some folks do active bi-amping, which takes a great deal of knowledge of crossover circuits and the specific speakers being used (you have to replace the speaker's internal crossovers with an external crossover network located ahead of the amps). This offers the greatest benefits. Passive bi-amping (which is what you are contemplating) will provide more power to the speaker, but that's about all it will do. Considering the power-hungry tendency of some of Polk's speakers, you can certainly give it a try and see if you like it.

400 watts is a lot man. more than I would like to listen to out of those polks (or pretty much anything for that matter). i would be the type to try it though :-).