Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Outboard amplifier for my HT?

Al1en, can you stack those Outlaws on top of each other? or are there vents at the top? My rack has one shelf left, two if I really want to cram the cable box into tight quarters.

Also, neither the Rotel or Outlaw has THD numbers as low as the Anthem. I know JohnK said THD is inaudible up to 0.1%, but...

No, Mark, blind listening tests indicate that on music, rather than pure test tones, THD has to be above 1.0% to be audible. Here's Yamaha's explanation of the point. It's your money, of course, but there might be things to spend it on that would be of more real benefit to you.

So the THD figures are irrelevant.
In buying a separate amp, all I'll be doing is providing a little extra power for those dynamic peaks?
What's the chance of damaging my Axioms with the little Denon 2802 maxed out during action flicks?

Very little chance, Mark, since the M60s can handle far more power than the (not so little)2802 can output, even in a clipping status. Here's an analysis of the "too little power" situation. More power is nice(as long as you don't have to pay more for it),and if noticeable distortion on peaks(comfortably loud levels use 1-2 watts)is frequently experienced, can help a bit. Note however that even doubling power from 100 watts to 200 watts only results in a 3dB increase in loudness, say from 110dB to 113dB.

That's interesting John but technical enough for alot of ppl to get stuck on reading it. I think it is a bad idea to simply state that low powered amps driven into clipping will not damage speakers based on the concept of point of clipping vs. power ratings.
Since most ppl at home cannot measure exactly how much or how little power their speakers receive from their equipment, a person running a Denon 1604 should not be thinking they can jack up the volume to 100% while driving all 5 channels just b/c their speakers are rated higher than the output power of the receiver.
They WILL damage their speakers.
It happens all the time. My housemate burned out his tweeter after playing his 300W speakers at a party with his 100w/ch Pioneer amp... TWICE!!
According to this guy's article " If your speakers are capable of handling significantly more than your amplifier can produce, driving them with a clipped signal will not likely hurt them.", that shoudl never have happened. Unless i missed something here which is certainly possible after a long day of writing, reading and it is midnight, or beyond.

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I just leave the amp on all the time...I don't think that this hurts anything.

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In my opinion, it's actually better for the unit over the long haul. Turning it on and off subjects the solder joints to heating up and cooling off cycles. Leaving it on avoids the cooling off cycle all together.

I did field service on computers back in the late 80s. It always seemed to me that the servers that never got turned off lasted much longer than the ones that were turned off regularly. I used to have to repair monitors all the time when they were near air conditioners. They would cool off more rapidly than the rest of the monitors in the room when people turned them off at night. Eventually, one color or another would start cutting out and coming back. Resoldering the color driver transistors would fix the problem. The monitors that were left on all the time never needed that fix. The ones not as close to the AC, but turned off every night needed it less frequently.

How hot does the Marantz get when it's just sitting there with no signal applied?

I also have a Marantz MM9000 I got mine at almost the exact same time that mhorgel got his, he is actually the one who brought it up originally… there is absolutely 0 noise from my amp, I turned the volume all the way up on my receiver one day with no input, just to see how much noise there was in my HT system, with the interconnects, bad AC ext, and to my amusement there was 0 hiss or any other audible distortion, absolute silence, with 0 input. Right now me and my roommate have been watching a movie for about 1 hour, and currently the amp is maybe 5 degrees above ambient temperature, in the back right corner only… I also have a marantz receiver, and it has a signal on, function, so when I turn the receiver on, the receiver sends a signal to the amp, and the amp comes out of standby, and when I turn it off same thing with the amp, it automatically goes into standby, I think that the auto on function on the amp works with any signal sent to the remote on channel.. so it could be video in, or any input at all.. it uses a regular rca as an interconnect for the remote turn on.. I have the epic 60 system, with the vp150, and with the MM9000 there is no stress on the amp at all, the amp could push these speakers all day with out breaking a sweat… also, mhorgel didn’t state, the amp has an indicator light on the front of it for each channel, incase you turn the volume up to much, and a specific channel starts clipping, it will turn the led on for that channel, so you can know that you are pushing the amp to hard… I have never seen any of the “overload” lights come on yet… but it is a nice feature, vs just playing it loud and blowing up your amp, not knowing your stressing it to much… stated above the outlaw product, the MM9000 has less distortion by quite a bit than any of the outlaw products, and is much less expensive that is why I got the MM9000, before I saw the MM9000 I was going to purchase outlaw product my self, but I got a cleaner amp, with only 50 watts less power per channel for about ½ the price… and I would rather have a little less power, that is cleaner that a little bit more “dirty” power…


Oh yeah, I love my MM9000, can you tell?

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How hot does the Marantz get when it's just sitting there with no signal applied?

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It barely gets warm, even when working. My Onkyo gets hotter, I presume because it's got microprocessors crunching all those numbers.

Mark

the amp is also more efficient as well i would presume, less internal resistances, there for lower signal degradation, there for less heat..