How come home theater receivers only seem to go up to 110 watts per channel total and not ever higher?

Posted by admin in Home Entertainment Q&AJul 10th, 2009 | 2 responses

demo asked:


I occassionally gander at home theater receivers now and then for the past three or four years and every time I look each one has no more than 110watts per channel output (a lot even have less than 100). How come they don't ever go up to say 200watts per channel or something? Or have some type of home theater amplifier? Wondering if anybody has any input and it would be greatly appreciated.

2 Responses to “How come home theater receivers only seem to go up to 110 watts per channel total and not ever higher?”

1. Mark W says:

   July 11, 2009 at 2:00 am

   Normally home theater systems support high channel audio. Say 6 channel Dolby or better. So 110w/channel is quite high (660W right there). Now the receiver has to have pre-amp, possibly radio receiver, and equilizer functions. These are low power applications that are highly susceptible to noise on the power rails and EM noise generated from nearby high power circuits. To properly shield the low power functions, supply power to all the functions, and then properly COOL the whole system down is a large engineering effort. People will not pay the $$ for the increased complexity that providing huge power support will cause to the whole system.
   For high power applications, you are much better off (quality/$) to go to individual components and purchase a pre-amp, with a high power amp.
   You could purchase a good quality low power theater receiver, then use the pre-amp outputs to amplifiers that support the type of power you are looking for. This will give you great quality high power output, at an audio quality dependant on the pre-amp (theater system) you choose.
2. slvrfx24 says:

   July 14, 2009 at 2:12 am

   Learning is fu…{:-{}.