Anyone planning to use the 1070 as a cheaper (and smaller!) 990 replacement? Any thoughts on the pluses or minuses of doing so?

And, if it is known to anyone, do we think the 65 watt (into 8 ohms) amp can realistically drive a 4 ohm load?

-SM

Interesting questions. Personally, I'll stay with my 990, but it may be relevent to look back at the 1050. I was hardly the only person to buy a 1050 and use its amp section while saving up for a separate amp (I bought a Model 750 about a year later), and the 1050 worked very well as a pre/pro from the time that I got the 750 until I replaced it with a 950 the following year. Getting a 1070 now and using it as a springboard into separates makes some good sense, and I'm sure some folks will do so.

The question of whether the amp will drive a 4 ohm load has less to do with the 8 ohm power rating and more to do with the restrictions that tend to come hand-in-hand with receiver amp design. There is a "4/8 ohm" switch, so it will probably handle some 4 ohm loads, but I'm always wary of asking a surround receiver to handle difficult-to-drive loads that often are rated at 4 ohms. After all, the ratings on speakers are generally a "nominal" value, and some low-impedance speakers that get rated at 4 ohms can dip down to 2 ohms or less fairly often. A speaker such as that would probably be best served by a separate power amp.

Merkles: I am currently running a 1050 with a Parasound 2ch. power amp rated at 205wpc. I see no reason why you couldn't do something similar with the 1070 if only your mains present a difficult load. Depending upon your needs you could also look for what I assume will be a greater volume of 755's on the used market.

Frankly, while I would like to upgrade to the 990 and a 770 or its replacement, my fall back is to just replace the 1050 with the 1070 and keep the Parasound for the fronts. Currently, my biggest problem is being able to justify to the better half why the 1070 is $500 to $600 better than the 1050 for a 6.1 system. Anyone have any suggestions (Dolby Headphone alone probably won't do it)?

Bruin:

Easier than taking out Tommy Trojan (What's the deal wtih the horse, anyway?)

But seriously:

I would have to presume that having on on-screen display with either the 1070 or 990 to help run the system would be a big plus for your significant other. Of course, as good as the 1050 was, there's got to be better sound either way. If you are only running a two channel system (hard to tell from your mention of the Parasound amp -- are you only 2.0/2.1 or 6.1 with that as the fronts?) having Dolby Virtual would be a plus, and then there are all the other things that simplify the system and make it sound better!

Good luck!

Hopefully, the downside of the cycle with SC will end this year or next.

As for the sound system I am running a 6.1 using the 1050 as a Prepro to the Parasound for the NHT VT1.4 fronts and to directly run the NHT VS 1.4 center and 3 NHT Superzero XU's in the back. The Parasound is a holdover from an older system.

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortuanately, my wife is not very demanding from a sound perspective, sometimes I think she doesn't even appreciate how much sound adds to a movie (or at least won't admit it to me). I am not sure how the OSD would help, I have a MX700 remote with a ton of activity macros (e.g. pushing the DVD button, switches the 1050 and HDTV's to the DVD player audio and video inputs respectively, turns on the DVD player, changes the HDTV screen format to full wide screen mode and then displays all of the relevant DVD controls).

This is definitely a thing that makes you go hmmmm... I would bet its every bit as good as the 990 sans balanced outputs and auto speaker setup. But for people who dont need those features its $200 bucks cheaper. Since the prices are relatively close, I cant imagine a significant difference between them especially when they use the same processors. It might be Outlaw has supplied us with a more afordable pre-amp alternative to replace the 950 after all!