Re: In Need of an Amplifier
You'll be fine with any of those I'm pretty sure. Lots of people here are fans of Emotiva and the Monolith/ATI amps. I'd probably go with the Monolith or Outlaw model since the Gen 3 Emotiva amps are so expensive and use switching power supplies now, even if they are really big fancy ones. I'd probably go with the Outlaw one just because it's an unbalanced design and your receiver has unbalanced preouts, The Outlaw 7140 has balanced inputs, but they're just summed with an IC to single ended. Seems pretty perfect for your use to me. I don't think you'd really notice much of a difference between 140 and 200 watts. Sierra speakers are pretty easy to drive. I don't have to push my XPA-5 Gen 2 hardly at all to send my Towers to ear-bleeding, epic levels. I haven't heard my Towers with any other amps, though. Curtis has more experience and may chime in.
As an aside, I think what makes the Monolith/ATI amp so heavy is the fact that it has not one, but two very large toroidal power supplies and a very sturdy chassis, plus the amp modules have huge heatsinks on them. It is a very robust design, a monolith indeed.
-Alex
PS4/Nvidia Shield --> Emotiva XMC-1 --> Emotiva XPA-5 --> Ascend Acoustics Sierra Towers and Horizon Center w/ RAAL tweeters (L/C/R), HTM-200 SE (Surrounds), 2x Rythmik F12 subwoofers