Yesterday vs Today

[jdubson]

I have a pair of Polk RTA 12 Speakers circa 1980. The best sound I ever heard and I was a DJ for 16 years (never got my road show to sound as good as home). I used to power them with a 1979 JVC receiver or Vector Research amp w/NAD pre amp and they blew down the house with the volume at 25%. Now I have them hooked up to a home theatre receiver, Pioneer 711 with as much power per channel as my old equipment but I need to go to 50% power with music and 60% power with DVD to really feel anything. What is different about this receiver? Is it because I play cds through the DVD player? I just don't understand.

[Mike682]

I know w/my older stuff (pioneer vsx-4400) I would reach a higher output with only about 25-30% volume. With my current H/K, I have to turn it up to about 65%+ to get a good amount of volume. I think that a lot of the receivers back then used different volume knobs (analog pots that don't turn full 360 degrees) and they weren't digitally controlled like today's stuff. For example, my 4400 would have a volume range of 1-30 and in contrast my current h/k goes from -80db to +10 db (with no speaker level adjustments).

As far as using dvd to play cd's, I don't think this would make it sound lower on your system.

Also, the current non-elite pioneers are rated at 1khz.....so they may say 100 w/channel but I believe they are more liklely around 65-75 watts a channel at 20hz to 20khz.

Mike

[steveinaz]

Welcome! It depends on the attenuation characteristics of the volume pot. It has no meaning of output capability. On my pre, I listen to CD's at 1/4 volume typically; but have to move to 1/2 for DVD movies to get similar levels. All depends on the levels of the source recording.