Noob Home Audio Questions

[oilerfan4lyfe]

Need a little hand understanding home audio...I've searched around but am still confused.

I bought a pair of Polk RtiA9s and reading online everyone says they need a lot of juice, most people suggest getting something like a Crown XLS1502 to drive the lower end and to use a regular 7.1 receiver to drive the mid range and tweeters. If I go this route, does the Crown automatically feed juice once the speakers get a signal from my regular receiver? Also, how would this hook up? Would speaker wire go from a pre-out on my receiver to the Crown, then to one of the connectors on the Polk speakers? Then another speaker wire would go directly from the 7.1 receiver to the mid/tweeter connector on the speaker?

Would this be that much better than just getting a 9.1 receiver and using two outputs from the receiver to go into the two connectors on the speakers? So I'd have 4 wires going from the receiver to one speaker instead of two and I'd disconnect the little clip that joins the connectors on the speakers. I think this is called bi-amping.

Finally, is getting 2 subs diagonal to one another actually better than just getting one good sub? It would be a 14x11 room in a basement with nothing but walls in it.

TIA

[nissanK]

A 7.1 receiver is not going to provide enough amplified power for the mid-range or tweeters. You're (almost) always going to have the audio feed from the receiver go through an amp for all the frequencies.

Looking at the Polk manual, you have bi-wire options from a single amp or have separate amps (bi-amping):
83318
83319

Personally, I would wire it the bi-wire setup. It's better to send more power than not enough.

As for the subs, I'm not sure if you'd hit some weird resonance having 2 units diagonal in the same space.

[Buster]

Sort of an odd setup they are suggesting.

I think what they are intending (sorry didn't look at the speaker manual), is that you run speaker wire from the receiver amp speaker connectors to the mids and tweets. Then you would use RCA cables to the amp from the pre-outs on the receiver. The speaker wire from the external amp to the other connects on the speakers for the lows. So you are using both the internal amp, and the pre-outs at the same time. Normally I think of pre-outs as going to a separate amp for all channels, but I guess this is a halfway thing.

[msommers]

What receiver do you have?

[oilerfan4lyfe]

Thanks for the replies.

I don't have a receiver yet, waiting to hopefully grab one on black Friday. I don't quite have the $$ to buy something like a crown with a high output so I'm hoping that using two outputs to each speaker from something like a 110W receiver will do the job. I think I'm still going to try it this way and start saving to buy a higher output amp.