22 minutes ago, AudioGeek said:

 

Are you using balanced or rca between avr and amps? Inline attenuators can work well and are adjustable

Only the fronts are running off the power amp, the surrounds and centre are the speakers I need to tame down and they are running off avr internal amp.

I’ve got Dirac working beautifully for multichannel sources, multichannel music played via Roon is breathtaking.

I’ve given up on 2 channel and resolved by moving 2 channel equipment to lounge room. Can’t beat a Roon streamer into a dac and into an integrated amp.

I blame the Integra for the poor 2 channels performance and not Dirac.

It still amazes me and intrigues me on how complex multichannel music is to get and play but to me is still easier to get incredible sound over 2 channel.

Another discovery today.

I was playing a multichannel channel album on Roon and the source is a PC with HDMI cable into INTEGRA.

When the album stopped the next album started and this was in 2 channel and it sounded good so I tried a some hard rock tracks which previously sounded bad with heavy distortion through the external dac into analog inputs but through HDMI it was clean as whistle no matter how loud I had it.

Obviously then the analog inputs on the INTEGRA are complete rubbish.

Hooray! 🥳🥳🥳

Well I’ve improved it even further by using Dirac on a PC and doing the full 17 position measurement.

This seems to work in reverse to Dirac on iPad app, on the INTEGRA app and even the PC  9 position measurement. In the fact that on the 17 position it set the hi efficiency speakers to their lowest level -12db and made the Magnepan speakers catch up to them so there is no hi gain distortion noise.

Or maybe it was the initial volume calibration where I set the volume trims to very low and slowly crept them up until a full sweep was completed.

Who knows but it does sound good.

This has resolved everything. A NAD C 350 for $250 used as a power amp so I have pre out L/R from avr into Main In on NAD. Had to lower the front levels on the front speaker avrs speaker level settings dramatically so NO more distortion noise.

Since I have the link out on the nad for the main to preamp can I connect a y cable so I can connect the avr to main but still have a connection from main to pre amp of the nad ?

Forget the y cable thing, I tried using as an integrated amp but sounded ok, no subs connected and would mean too much work and extra cables to do it. 
Connected my dac and roon back into avr, took links back out if Nad and connected back to main in and Wow, this Nad is a great power amp, of course it’s now benefiting from the INTEGRA 3.4, dual subs and Dirac and that’s pretty damn fine.