Hi ,thx for letting me know i havent set it up right,sorry about the spelling still cant get used to my tablets keyboard,i had the left and right rca going from the 1060 to the cd input on the 2070,didnt realize the 2070 pre outs were pre in ,i watched deadpool like this last night and it wis brillant,to my ears it sounded a hell of lot cleaner,bigger and more dynamic,switched bck to 1060 to compare and it wasnt the same,and that was only stereo Dam..wonder what it will sound like when ive got connnected the right way,so i need to connect to pre in,what about the rears,its a 7.1?can i connect those aswell,also as the 2070 dosent have optical in,what happens if i connect my dac with rca into the 2070,am i using the dac inside the 2070 or am i using the external dac chip,i know usally when connecting a dac with rca you are useing its built in chip,and with optical id be bypassing the external dac and use the dac in the 2070,if yamaha built it like that then that would mean if i used a cheap dvd player into the 2070 with rca and svideo id be useing dac in the dvd player,i wouldnt want to do that,and the amp was up in the loft all boxed for 10 years,is in mint condition
Connected it the way you said, 1060 into pre in on the 2070,but the volume control,dsp effects,and the bass, tone control are not working this way on the 2070,im getting sound but volume knob does nothing when i turn it,have to control these with the 1060,is that normal,been useing the pre in ,not sure i like it,ive lost all the bass,what diffrence does it make if i jst use the cd rca input and switch off the dsp effects for stereo mode
I'm going to try to summarise across the posts to pull everything in to a single reply.
Pre-Ins versus Line In
You've said you didn't realise that the Pre-Outs were Pre-Ins: I'm hoping that that was just the way you phrased thing. The sockets on the back of the 2070 with the little black bridging connects (there's three of them) are each a Pre-Out socket connected to a Pre-In socket. So, the Pre-Outs aren't Pre-Ins. The Pre-Outs are Pre-Outs and the Pre-Ins are Pre-Ins. It's just that they're grouped together very closely.
You wrote that you prefer the sound (more bass) with the 1060 connected to a Line Input compared to connecting directly to the 2070 Pre-Ins. The Pre-amp section of the 2070 is pretty good, but it's the power amp section that is the star. If anything, the 1060 connected directly to the power amp section of the 2070 should give the cleanest and biggest sound. However, that does depend on a couple of conditions to make an accurate comparison. Probably the most important, but also most easily overlooked, is that the volume has to be balanced between the two different methods.
When you connect via the 2070 Line Input, the signal is going through the pre-amp section. As you know, that means the volume control and all the facilities of the pre-amp section can affect the signal. There are at least three consequences from this:
1) The volume control affects the signal level (obviously). But what's not so obvious is that even a subtly different level can change your perception of the sound. If the level going via the 2070 Pre-amp is even marginally higher, then by the time you've ramped up the 1060 volume for a good old listening session, you can end up with a fair bit more energy getting in to the room. There's a point where the standing waves start to build that can easily be perceived as more bass energy.
2) The Pre-amp in the 2070 isn't entirely neutral. Very few Pre-amps are; so it will impart a subtle change to the character of the sound.
3) Any 2070 Pre-amp settings such as the bass control or loudness being switched on are going to have a pretty big effect on the sound of the Line Input compared to going direct.
What does all this mean? In order to properly compare one against the other, the signal route through the 2070 Pre-amp needs to be as neutral as possible. You'll have already worked out that any bass, treble, loudness and DSP settings should be switched off. What's trickier to do is to get the 2070 volume control set to a point where there's no difference in level going via Line IN compared to the direct connection through the Pre-Ins. The best way to achieve that is with a test tone and a sound meter.
You have test tones built in to the 1060. A sound meter might be more difficult to rustle up unless you're a smart phone user. There are sound meter apps for iOS and Android that will do fine for the task.
The side and rear surround channels
You asked how to connect them to the 2070. The short answer is you don't.
When you look at which speakers do the most work in 5.1/7.1 mode, then it's the Centre speaker first, then the front L&R. The sub is powered independently, so that doesn't count when we're looking at amplifier power. The L.C,R channels are the prime candidates for any power upgrades. If you were buying additional power amps, then these are the ones you'd buy first.
That's exactly how you'd connect the 2070. Make it do the work to drive the power hungry centre and front speakers. Let the 1060 pick up what's left and drive the side and rear surrounds. This also works out really well for stereo music playback.
On a practical note, the 2070 has Pre-ins for just 3 channels. These are L,C,R. The signal for the surround channels is generated by the 2070's DSP processing. There's no way to directly access driving the side and surround channels from an external signal. You should also look at the way Yamaha divided the power of the 2070. They gave the L,C,R channels 80W a piece (8 Ohms) and just 25W per channel for the surrounds. That means 70% of all the available power is going to just 3 speakers out of 7. That's your prioritisation in black and white.
The practical difference between connecting Line In versus the L,C,R Pre-Ins
You mentioned about whether Line In or the Pre-Ins would be better.
Either option is open to you (and a third option we haven't yet discussed), but your choice will affect how the system sets up and runs and, more importantly, could make the job of setting it up a lot harder.
You could stick with running the 2070 in Line In mode. The pros of doing this are that you can tweak the tone of the L&R channels with the 2070 controls. One of the cons of this is that you have to make sure the 2070 volume dial is set to exactly the same point each time you use the system. The other con is that the most important speaker for 5.1/7.1 (the center speaker) doesn't get the benefit of the the power that the 2070 brings to the party. I think that's a great shame since you're wasting 1/3rd of the available power from the 2070.
Option 2 is running the Pre-outs for L,C,R in to the 2070 Pre-ins for the same channels. Pros: 3 channels driven, no complicated volume set-up, and - subjective, I know - but I think better sound once the system is fully dialled in. Cons: At the moment you don't like the way this sounds as much as running Line In, but I think that's because we're not yet comparing apples with apples.
Option 3 is something we haven't yet discussed. It's running the L & R channel Pre-outs from the 1060 in to one of the Line inputs on the 2070, and running the Center channel Pre-out on the 1060 in to the Centre channel Pre-in on the 2070. This would give you the front 3 channels driven by the 2070, albeit by different routes. You'd also have the option of tweaking the L&R channels using the 2070 Pre-amp controls. The cons are that you have a lot of different controls all interacting; this would make it harder to ensure that all the channels stay in balance throughout the volume range., and you still have to make sure that the 2070 volume control is set correctly each time.
External versus Internal DACs in the 2070
This one is simple to answer. With no digital inputs on the 2070 rear panel, then there's no need for a DAC in the conventional sense.
Internally, there is an ADC stage (analog to digital conversion) before the DSP chip gets the signal, then a DAC to convert the DSP output back to analog again, but all this happens internally within the DSP processing chain, so it doesn't count as a DAC as far as any digital input signal is concerned.
As far as source signals go, I wouldn't use a cheap DVD player in to the 2070 full stop. If it's for playing DVDs, feed the optical or coax digital output in to the 1060 and let that do the DD/DTS/DPLII decoding. But if your idea was to play back CD from the DVD player, then given that most inexpensive DVD players make lousy CD players, I'd say you're throwing a garbage signal in to a great system. Why?
Your average budget DVD player has horrific amounts of jitter. They're not good for CD playback. There were universal players that did a good job as CD players as well as doing DVD. Pioneer 757, 868, 989, Denon 2800, 3900, ARCAM DV27, DV88, and a few other makes. These were all in the £500-£1500 price range when new. Some can be picked now for £50-£100
