Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Possible AMP addition for the VP-180 and M80's

Jake has a good point, hook everything up, and watch a movie at your normal listening level, and see if you feel your missing anything.

I would think the 4810 would have plenty of balls, but only time will tell.

I am currently using an Emotiva XPA-5 amp and at 4 ohms it supplies 440wpc, and at 8 ohms it supplies 250wpc. it does wonders powering my M80v3 towers, VP180v3 center and as of tomorrow it will do wonders for the QS8v3 surrounds. it's a real workhorse, hasn't gotten real hot (it's gotten real warm but not real hot yet)and it gives the speakers everything they want when they want no matter the volume (of course i don't roll reference volume cause i want to keep my hearing!) they cost $799 with $25 shipping in the cont. USA. here is a picture with the front 3 soundstage, the XPA-5 is at the bottom left and my Onkyo SC-R5507P pre-amp is next to it. i am very happy and didn't break my bank either!

If you are going to get an emotiva, you will need to make a decision if you want to get the sale price, if you look at avsfroums, these amp are popular over there also.

Jeff, your "thinking" is premature to a gross degree. You haven't even received your VP-180 yet! Your 4810 is more than sufficient for the vast majority of home applications. There's no magic in separate amplifiers and they simply add what would be unused excess capacity in most cases.

Enjoy the great sound that you'll soon have.

hey john don't hate toooooo much, he sees a shiny new toy....

Dak, telling the truth isn't "hate".

Then what's that yellow rain than dakkon felt?

Well Geek I too think your best bet is to wait until the new speaker gets there, hook it up to your Denon, and throw everything you can at it and see if it meets and/or exceeds your expectations. If it does the job just fine, then save your money. If you feel it's clipping, or if it ends up shutting down on you (this happened to me once with my Denon 4802), then perhaps an external amp is just what the doctor ordered for you.

For me my Denon kept me happy 95% of the time. But I really like to crank my system up from time to time, and it left me wanting when I really pushed the volume up. So I went the Emotiva route (XPA-3) and it satisfied my cravings just fine. Like Dakkon said, an outboard amp isn't going to change the sound quality of your sound system until you're really pushing the volume level WAY up. Your Denon (and my Denon, and every other Denon) will be pushed into distortion when trying to extract it's peak power out of it. With the Emotiva running the show, if I'm pushing my system to the point that it's using say 150 watts of power (more than what the Denon is rated to produce), that's only half of the XPA-3's rated output (300 watts) at 4 ohms, so the distortion level will be much lower than if I were pushing the Denon to that level since amps begin to produce more distortion once it's being pushed to it's limits. Also, the Emotiva (or any other amp with as much or more power than the Emotiva) won't get pushed into clipping nearly as soon as the Denon will be.

But all of that depends on how high you turn that volume knob. That's why many here will tell you to see what your Denon does with your speakers at normal listening levels before you go out an purchase an amp. Because your Denon is pretty beefy, and will play louder than many here will EVER play it. So the question is, does it play loud/clean enough for your tastes? Or are you more like Dakkon, WID and myself and prefer something with a little more headroom so that you can really crank it from time to time without worrying about clipping and/or shutdowns.

Personally, I've been very happy with my Emotiva. However I don't recommend it for those people running Axiom's 4 ohm speakers since there have been so many mixed experiences with Emotiva amps and those Axiom products. I won't tell you not to try them out (they have a 30 day trial just like Axiom). But I won't tell you to try them out either. I would suggest you try Outlaw or Rotel for affordable amps.... Krell, McIntosh or the A1400-8 if you have the bucks for them.

But definately, just use the Denon for a few weeks or a month before you seriously consider any of those other amps.

Thanks for all the input and suggestions. I took a look at some of the offerings on Emotiva's website. Both the XPA-3 and XPA-5 look like great units for the money.

Right now I will get everything hooked up and calibrated. Then I will give the speakers a good workout with my Denon and see if I have any issues. Once that is done, if I feel that I still need an AMP I will look at possibly getting the XPA-3. It doesn't seem like I would need more than a three channel unit for my application.