Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Would you upgrade your amp?

It seems that the cost of the ADA amps are at an incredible price now. They are even far cheeper that I paid some 2 months ago. It works out for me to loose $100 from what I paid, to trade in my current new ADA1000-5. The cost for a new ADA1250-5 is about $1000 more, where the ADA1500-5 is only $1500 more. The prices are a good $700-1200 less than the prices 2 months ago.

I have my LFR1100 speakers and a VP180.

I really would like to be able to speak with Andrew who designed the Amp to get the realy low down on how to read the nunbers and what to expect. Part of me would like to use the XLR interconnects that I have between my Anthem AVR700 - DSP - ADA amp. I have paid for some nice XLR interconnects, so I might as well use them.

But where I run into the dumb questions comes down to how to read the real numbers for the specs on the amp.

For example. The front speakers of the LFR are rated at 4ohms. I was told after several pointed questions, that the rear speakers on the LFR are really only 8ohms. Right now I have these speakers plugged into a 4 channel ADA amp that gives a rating of 250w@4ohms for the fronts and 125w@8ohms for the rears. But those numbers are the absolute maximum that this amp can produce even if you had less speakers driven.

Now if I went with a larger ADA1250 or even the ADA1500 but went with a 5 channel unit and drive the VP180 speakers off the same amp, according to the spec sheet on the web, the amp would be procuding 250w@4ohms/225w@8ohms and 300w@4ohmw/300w@8ohms respectively,

But here is where it gets to be rather a gray area.. If you look at the LFR1100 speaks, the fronts have 7 drivers (3 way) with 3 of the larger 6.5" HP drivers. But the rear of the speaker only has 4 drivers (2 way) with 2 tweeters and 2 of the 5.25" mid range drivers. The rear set of speakers are not nearly going to be drawing or requireing nearly as much power as the frequency range of the rear speakers simply can't drop that low. So with the larger ADA1250 and ADA1500 speakers are you realy going to drop in power capability to the number of the 5 way when you are really only pulling equivilent to 2.5 channels of sound?

And using a bit more logic. If routed the cables so that the rears are being powered by my first ADA1000 @125w and instead saved the chunk of coin and bought just the ADA1500-3, then I would be boosting my front speakers for 500w or possibly even 650w in just stereo sound mode as you would not be driving the center speaker when listening to just music. Perhaps that would be a better option? I can quite happily do movies in 5.1 rather than 7.1 considering I haven't even bought new speakers for the rear yet.