Help with 7.1/5.1 surround sound please!?

Question

i bought a pioneer surround sound reciever today and i was wondering it says its a 7.1 reciever, and its 100wx7 so what would it put out for 5.1 because i only have a 5 speakers right now and dont really plan on getting more right away but i really wanted to take advantage of the 700w

Answer 1

Because you will not be driving your amplifier as hard and thus the power supply has a higher reserve power. You might get a few extra watts from it. It will only be about 10 to 20 watts per channel max. Your manual should actually tell you what the wattage rating is in a 5 channel set up. And possibly a 2 channel set up.

Example:

My old Denon receiver is 65 watts/channel when driving 5 channels but it is 80watts/channel when driving 2 channels only. This is because of the higher reserve power from the power supply.

You will most likely not notice much of a difference as I don't either.

Most of the improvement will come during higher peak requirements such as a cannon blast. This improvement will come from an improved "dynamic headroom" this is a momentary increase in power form your amp at peak levels. If you have 3 db of headroom your amp has the capability to produce double its power for short instances. Again you will most likely not notice much.

Answer 2

Still same watts/channel as before.

1000 ways to rate musical power, but the amp rail voltage won't change by ridding two channels, so neither will the max possible output before clipping.

The guy below me has talked to best buy salesmen for too long.  Even if it changes denon's c**p rating, there is no majic that makes a rail voltage go up, it is impossible.  The true power rating of an amp is max power without clipping or v^2/2R, since the rail voltage can't change, neither can the max output.  this holds true for class A/B and class D.

Now, it is true that a power supply could c**p out before all channels peak, but this situation is so rare it's not even worth discussing.