Well, for me I’m just getting into stereo setup after decades in home theater. I don’t want to spend too much for my first amplifier after naively spent too much for the D90SE, then I saw this that is priced just nicely and the measurements here actually had me curious. Whether the SINAD matters or not, I really have no experience, no idea what I’m going to hear. But if I can afford to find out, I will do it.
I already have 9 speakers in the room, don’t want to buy more so I have to use the main speakers from my home theater for both purpose.
I can use balanced connection from the D90SE so that’s most important for me and connected the main speakers to the PA5.
To use the same speakers for home theater, I don’t want to keep unplugging the speakers from the PA5 and back to the Denon AVC-X4700H, and vice versa. As you know speaker terminals are always in the back, you can imagine there’s already tons of cables behind the AV receiver. The best way is to use the preout from the AV receiver to the second input on the PA5, this way I only need to change the input on the PA5 when I’m switching from music to home theater.
The AV receiver doesn’t have balanced output, so I don’t have any other choice than to use the RCA to the PA5. Most importantly for now is that it works flawlessly, my ears even hear improvements compared to using the AV receiver’s internal amplifier. I just need to increase the level a bit.
So it’s a compromise, depends on use case, not simply “want to drive this amp with an unballanced signal”. But it is one that I’m satisfied with the result right now. I’m already looking for the next stereo amplifier, which will be my real one, the PA5 is more like testing water. One of the criteria is having one set of balanced input and another for RCA. I’m looking at Audiophonics HPA-S400ET now, but I’m not done looking.