Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Separate amp for the fronts make a difference?

It harkens back to whether not you believe that amps make a difference in sound quality at 'normal' volumes.

Those that believe that different amps do change the sound quality would say that using different amps for different speakers would cause SQ problems. It's likely that any response from an amp manufacturer will follow this logic, as they all believe that their amps sound the best.

Those that believe that amps are neutral to the sound would say that their email response is hogwash. Just as Hutzal said, in this case you can certainly use different amps for front and rear, provided that you do make sure you calibrate the channel levels. Input gains may be different, and that would lead to different speakers needing more or less trim. On my LPA-1, for instance, the 6-7 channels have a slightly lower input gain (by design) than channels 1-5, which means I have to bump up my rear channels a few DB during calibration. It's not a big deal, and it sounds great.

When I first got my LPA-1, I ran my system with it powering the mains + center and my AVR powering the surrounds for a few days, due to lack of interconnects. I had no problem with soundstage what-so-ever once recalibrated. The calibration levels were definitely different than before, but it worked. I suppose if you had two amps of wildly different input gain levels, you could have them so mis-matched that your pre-pro/AVR didn't have enough adjustment to compensate.

Yeah Bruce, that reply appears to be nonsensical. Different amplifiers can easily vary 2-3dB in gain, just as speakers can vary in sensitivity. The purpose of calibration is to balance the sound levels at the listening position despite such variances.

littleb: that was really a BS answer. Not much more can be said!!!