The Best AV Receivers With Pre-Outs

A pre-out is a line-level copy of a channel, taken after the receiver’s processing and volume control and before its power amplifier. Plug an external amplifier into it and that amplifier drives the speaker instead of the receiver’s own channel. That is the entire feature. The complication is that every receiver has at least one socket labeled pre-out — the subwoofer output is one by definition — and manufacturers count that socket when they print “pre-out” on a feature list.

What a pre-out is for, and the two reasons people want one

The first reason is power. Receivers in the bracket we cover publish 50 to 100 W per channel with two channels driven, and the honest figure with all channels driven is lower and usually unpublished. A front L/R pre-out lets a stereo power amplifier take over the two channels that do most of the work. The second reason is using an amplifier you already own: a stereo integrated with a home-theater bypass, or a power amplifier from a two-channel system, so that the receiver handles decoding and video and the amplifier you trust handles the mains. Both reasons need the same thing, and it is not a subwoofer socket.

A full set of pre-outs — seven channels plus two subwoofers on a 7.2 receiver — goes further: the receiver becomes a processor, and every channel can be driven externally. In the price range we cover exactly one receiver publishes that. Below it, the honest options are two receivers with front L/R pre-outs, and then a drop to subwoofer-only.

How we ranked this

On the published pre-out count, verbatim from each maker’s spec sheet or manual, and on nothing else. Full 7.2 beats front L/R; front L/R with a zone output beats front L/R alone; subwoofer-only is last, and one such receiver is on the list deliberately, because its spec page uses the words “pre-out” and “line-out” in a way that a buyer searching for this feature will misread. Phono stage, power and room correction are covered on the music-receiver page and the under-$1,000 page; this page answers one question.

The five receivers not on this list are excluded by their own documentation. The Denon AVR-S670H publishes “subwoofer only (0.2)”. The Yamaha RX-V4A and RX300A publish two subwoofer pre-outs and no main-channel pre-outs. The Denon AVR-S570BT publishes “0.2 — two subwoofer outputs and nothing else”. The Yamaha RX-V385 publishes subwoofer only. If your budget is a sub-$500 receiver, the honest answer to “cheapest AV receiver with pre-outs” among the models we can verify is that there is not one; at the prices live when this was written, the cheapest is the Yamaha RX-V6A, and the live figures above are the ones to check.

Full 7.2 pre-outs on a slim chassis

The Marantz Cinema 70s publishes full 7.2 pre-outs on its product page — seven channels plus two subwoofers — and it is the only receiver we cover that does. Its own power amplification is the smallest here at 50 W + 50 W into 8 ohms, 20 Hz to 20 kHz at 0.08% THD with two channels driven, which is the cost of the slim chassis. That combination is exactly what full pre-outs are for: a receiver whose processing you keep and whose amplifiers you can replace one pair at a time, starting with the fronts. It publishes an MM phono input with a ± 1 dB RIAA deviation figure, Audyssey MultEQ, and Dolby Atmos and DTS:X decoding. It is also the most expensive receiver on the site, and for a buyer who will never connect an external amplifier the pre-outs are money spent on a feature not used.

Front L/R pre-outs plus a zone output

The Yamaha RX-V6A owner’s manual publishes front L/R pre-outs, two subwoofer pre-outs, and Zone 2 L/R outputs — not a full 7.2. Its own amplification is 100 W per channel into 8 ohms, 20 Hz to 20 kHz at 0.06% THD, two channels driven, the highest full-band rating here. It ranks second because front L/R is the pre-out that answers the first reason above, and at the prices live when this was written it is the cheapest receiver we cover that publishes one. The Zone 2 outputs are a separate thing: a second-room feed at line level, not a copy of the main channels, and they do not add to the pre-out count for the main room. Yamaha’s spec server returned HTTP 403 on our last re-read, so these figures date from 2026-07-17.

2.2 pre-outs, documented as such

Denon’s info sheet for the AVR-X1800H publishes “2.2” pre-outs: front L/R and two subwoofers. It publishes 80 W + 80 W into 8 ohms, 20 Hz to 20 kHz at 0.08% THD, two channels driven, six HDMI inputs of which three are 8K, and the best-documented phono stage in the bracket. It ranks third because it and the Yamaha publish the same usable pre-out set, front L/R plus subwoofers, and the Yamaha adds the zone feed for less money. What makes the Denon worth listing here rather than folding into a footnote is the documentation: Denon prints “2.2” on the info sheet, which is the clearest statement of a partial pre-out set any maker here makes. Our review covers the rest of the receiver.

The one where pre-out means a subwoofer socket

The Onkyo TX-NR6100 is on this page as a warning, and we rank it last on purpose. Onkyo’s spec page publishes two relevant rows: a subwoofer pre-out at 1 V rms / 470 Ω, and a Zone 2 / Zone B line-out at 200 mV rms / 470 Ω. No main-channel pre-out appears anywhere on the page. A search result that lists the TX-NR6100 as having pre-outs is reading one of those two rows. The Zone B line-out is a fixed-level feed for a second system, five times lower in level than the subwoofer output, and it is not a copy of the front channels after the volume control. If you want this receiver, want it for its 100 W FTC-rated channels, its THX certification and its published 65 W idle draw — not for pre-outs it does not have.

Amplifiers for home theater: what to plug into the pre-out

Three kinds of amplifier connect to a front L/R pre-out. A stereo power amplifieris the simplest: line in, speakers out, no volume control of its own, so the receiver’s volume and room correction still apply. The Fosi Audio V3 in our registry is that shape — RCA line inputs only — though its 300 W per channel figure is published at 4 ohms with no distortion condition, and Fosi publishes no 8 ohm figure at all. Our preamp-versus-power-amp page explains what the pre-out is handing over.

An integrated amplifierworks if it has a home-theater bypass or a fixed-gain input; otherwise you are stacking two volume controls, and the receiver’s room correction is being re-scaled by a knob it cannot see. None of the integrateds we cover publishes a bypass input, so we do not recommend one for this job without checking the manual of the unit you own. A streaming amplifier such as the WiiM Amp has an RCA line input and would work as a power stage, but its gain and input sensitivity are unpublished, and it decodes stereo PCM only, so it belongs on the page about skipping the receiver rather than on this one.

When you do not need pre-outs

If the system is five or seven speakers driven by the receiver and it will stay that way, pre-outs are a line item you can ignore, and the under-$1,000 page ranks the same hardware on the specs that matter for that system. If the system is two speakers and a subwoofer with a television, an integrated amplifier with a subwoofer output publishes better two-channel numbers for the money, and that comparison is honest about it. Pre-outs earn their cost when the amplifier you want to use already exists, or when the receiver is the processor you intend to keep while the amplifiers change under it. For that buyer there is one answer here, and it is the Marantz.