Hello, I recently purchased a MRX720 to use in my home. I have a question regarding the preamp outputs I am hoping someone can help with. I am upgrading from an MRX700. I have a 7.1 system and am using all external amplification (pre-outs only). I hooked up the 720 in the same way. I read in the manual for the 720 that the rear back channel amp can be reassigned to either back surround, heights, or zone 2. I reassigned it to heights in order to use the built in amp to power some atmos ceiling speakers. I noticed that when I did this, I lost my rear back surround channels from the preamp out. Is this correct? Is the preamp out for the back surround channel tied to the internal amp selection? If so, this seems odd. Why would selecting what happens to the internal amp affect the pre-outs? I would think the pre-outs would be fixed as there are already pre-outs for heights 1 and 2 present as well as Zone 2. I searched to find an answer to this but could not. Please help. I would like to run my main seven channels (FL/C/FR/SL/SR/BL/BR) from outboard amps and use the assignable amp in the receiver to power a pair of heights. Is this possible? Could I have something configured wrong somewhere else?
Thanks
Mike
Thanks in advance
The funny thing is, you probably could find the answer if you read Denon/Marantz/Yamaha's manual.
If you want to find the answer in the MRX700/1120 manual you probably won't find it (hope I am wrong). That's because from what I could remember Anthem did not provide much details in their manuals though for the basic features, there were adequate information.
My educated guess is, what you found on the pre outs was expected, because the MRX has only 7 channel of internal amps. So when you re-assigned the back surround channel to heights you will of course lose the back surround channel pre out because they would be redirected to drive the height channel.
So it looks like your choice is to not use the re-assign feature this way, unless the MRX720 has an option (like DMY's) to assign the front L/R to pre out, then you can use the front L/R internal amps to power the Atmos/Height channels.
I'll try to find out if it can do it, but again theirs manuals are so skinny...
Edit: Just read the manuals, there is no mentioning of assigning any channels to pre-outs (if true, that's one negative on Anthem's). So it looks like you are stuck with using external amp for the 4 Atmos channels. To be sure I haven't missed anything, contact Anthem. If confirmed then I suppose you could buy a low cost amp such as Emotiva's, to power the Atmos/Height speakers.