Hello all,

I'm in the process of upgrading my home theater system and I've chosen these speakers:

BA VR3 mains (93db)
BA VR12 center
BA Bravo rears (soon to be VR-M60)

I've been using a Pioneer Elite VSX-24TX that I love (90wpc). I'm looking to upgrade so I can get DTS-ES and Dolby 7.1 support. I've looked at the new Elite 72 and 74, but they sound rather bad to me. I compared them to the new Denon 3806 and almost purchased it.

I've been reading a lot this last week and I'm pretty sure I want to go with the Outlaw 1070. My only concern is that the 1070 won't put out enough sound to fill my family room. It's 20x24x9 plus an adjacent kitchen and "Florida" room that are connected by half-walls.

My listening habits are 20% movies, 20% music (SACD and CD), and 60% childrens programming (3 kids will do that to you). I'm not interested in blowing out my ears, but I do listen to Mahler which has a very large dynamic range.

Please help a newbie!

Michael

Power ratings on Pioneer/Sony/Yahama receivers are sort of like saying a car can do 120 miles per hour and qualifying it in the fine print by saying, driving off a cliff right before you hit the ground.

This b.s. on power ratings is especially pronounced on the lower end receivers although with the new Elite line the b.s. has reached a crescendo (the 72 and 74 actually produce about 40 watts per channel less power than the 56 and 54 models they replace yet claim 20 watt per channel power increases (look at the weight of the new receivers and you will see what is going on).

Those ratings are usually peak power ratings for a few milliseconds into a 6 ohm load for a single channel at 1 khz. Outlaws are all channels driven full spectrum sound for about 5 seconds at about 90% of rated output.

My guess is that your current receiver really can produce about 1/2 the power of the 1070 or less (weight is usually a good proxy for power given similar amplifier technology).

Given this info, how efficient are your current speakers and how loudly do you play them? For instance If you have Klipshorn speakers with 96 decibel ratings into 1 watt at 1 meter you could get by just fine with a couple of watts of power.

Read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibels#Electronics

to understand how power relates to sound output and how our ears perceive volume differences.

I'm running a 1070 in a slightly smaller room with an open kitchen at one end and a long hallway at the other and using similarly efficient speakers (Axiom M3ti @ 92dB) and I have had no problems with the volume. After calibrating to reference I typically find that I will rarely need to take anything higher than -15dB and that's only for movies when I want to seriously immerse myself in the soundtrack. For casual listening or watching tv -25 dB or -25 dB is more common taking things down as far as -40 dB when my girlfriend's asleep.

Considering that the standard startup volume is set to -25 dB I would assume that my listening volumes would be relatively average.

I am currently running a BA CRC center and Bravo (6 ohm) for mains and surrounds. I originally had VR-975 and a VR-12 before I had a brainfart and sold them.

This setup is not very good for movies since I have to continually adjust the volume for quiet passages to hear and for loud passages so I can hear .

The VR-975's had no problem filling up an even larger space in my previous home (40x20x9), so my guess is the 1070 and VR3/VR-12/VRM60 should have no problem.