Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Amps

WHAT? I can't hear ya

There are a number of good amps at great prices out there. I have an RPA-1(217wpc x 2) driving my M60's, and since getting it less than 2 weeks ago, I've noticed a dramatic increase in overall performance at all volumes in my system. For M80's, I imagine the increase would be even more prominent. I think the RPA-1 would definitely do the job and then some.

I keep reading about all these posts talking of power and room volume.
Distance is a key variable that is being left out.

Mojo, you say such a power output is loud for your system, but at what listening distance?
8 feet?
16 feet?
24 feet?

I see no reason to doubt that anyone with a common living room of 8 foot ceilings, maybe 12 feet wide and 18 feet long (under 2000 cubic feet) would be needing something larger than a typical receiver to hit 100+ dB at the 18 foot mark pushing 4 ohm speakers compared to a listening distance of 10 feet.

I have an Anthem amp (225w /ch) driving Tannoys (93 db/W/m) and at 18 feet, it starts to clip around the 100-104 dB point. Driving them with a Coda amp at 300w/ch, Class A into the first 20W provided levels of 106-108 peak but it was so loud i never pushed it to clipping.
At 15 feet my Onkyo 797 starts to distort around the 94dB mark with these Tannoys.

Don't underestimate the power and reserve capacity of bigger amps.

I'm 8 feet away from the M80s and the VP150. I don't bother giving out the details anymore because I'm sounding like a broken record. See the room below...4,000 cubic feet and an opening to the upstairs too. I'm sure regulars here are getting sick of these pictures as well.

We have to be careful that we don't only look at room volume but also at how live or dead the room is. I saw one A/V room on The Wall of Fame that had acoustic panels over every square inch including cushy floors. That person needs more power because there are no reflections to speak of. And of course we have to take listeners' hearing into account.

We're only sick of seeing the pictures because of the bare walls. At least put up the PorterPlex Poltergeist poster.

We do have two pictures up now but yeah...you're right...it's still quite naked.

My wife was giving me heck about that today. But then I reminded her that she's in charge of the art. She's found some nice looking work but what good is it if it lacks the correct absorption coefficients ?

Those pictures have taken up permanent residence in my browser cache.

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I'm 8 feet away from the M80s and the VP150. I don't bother giving out the details anymore because I'm sounding like a broken record. See the room below...4,000 cubic feet and an opening to the upstairs too. I'm sure regulars here are getting sick of these pictures as well.

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Well that's my fault for not reading as many posts as i used to.

As for the repetition of specs, don't worry about it. Someone else already holds the gold star for that one.