I've convinced my wife that with the placement of our QS8s on the back wall, and further from the LP, we need more power to unburden the puny amps in the Denon 2802. To some extent this is true - I have the volume at around -12 for movies w/ the output signal boosted for the surrounds to near max.
I don't want to break the bank, but I also don't want a refurbed receiver (or a new one for that matter) junking up all my nice stuff. The Parasound Halo A23 would be at the upper limits of my budget, and I would prefer to keep it under $500.
And while I don't necessarily subscribe to the "amps all sound different" theory, an amp noted for a little extra "warmth" would be nice for music listening. Of course, whatever I buy has to blend sonically with the Denon for HT.
Can you help a brother out?
Bigwill, as you know i've had my eye on the Parasound for awhile now. If you get something like the A23 (which i've seen used on Audiogon for as low as $600), i suggest you let it power your main speakers which frees up power from your receiver for the surrounds. The mains are more likely to hit transient peaks than the surrounds and hence are more likely to require a stronger amp source.
The A23 was excellent but you pay for the light show and name.
Another alternative amp that is solid and cheap is the Anthem lineup (MCA). The
previous year model MCA2 is
cheap on audiogon for the power they put out. The
newer versions are a bit more but similar. Often overlooked by newbies looking for a cheap and good quality amp. The only Anthem MCA i see on Audiogon right now is the
5 channel version, but the 2 channel should be about $500 used. Anthem also sells their
PVA amps which have slightly less power than the MCA series so again, they will be priced cheaper.
You can see my thoughts again in this
old post.
C'mon guys. It's been like 5 minutes already!
Fine.
I will post again.
Anthem, anthem, anthem.
you know i am all about putting in my 2 cents, but i just dont know enough about amps/receivers to make my opinion count here. at this point in the game, i am absorbing knowledge, as opposed to dishing it out..
but i hope you can find a solution.. the wife is convinced, that is half the battle
bigjohn
I know that this is a bit above your budget, but accessories4less.com has the Marantz MM9000 170wx5 power amp for $749 with free shipping. The original MSRP for this unit was over $2000. I am very happy with mine.
Mark
Thanks Chess. Your 1st reply wasn't up at the time.
I haven't looked at Anthems at all. I was under the impression that they were quite expensive. Will check it out. Thanks.
That sounds like a lot of power for the buck. What kind of warranty comes w/ that, Mark?
And, at risk of displaying my ignorance, how does an external amplifier affect callibration and volume control? In particular, if I use a 2 channel amp to power my mains must I use the volume controls on my receiver and the new amp independently? That would suck.
Bigwill,
You would use the pre-out channels on your receiver to plug into the amp (same as you do for a subwoofer right now).
Then your receiver becomes the pre-amp section for your mains. You can still calibrate and setup the speakers as normal in your receiver settings.
Factory warrantee from Marantz. These are not refurbs or B-stock.
The amp has a pot for each channel in the back that can be adjusted, but with the pots at max is THX reference level (did I mentionthat the unit is THX-Ultra certified?), and I have all of them at max and never touch them. Basically, you use the volume knob on the receiver (or pre/pro) only.
It's a LOT of watts for the buck, and I highly recommend the MM9000. If you google it, or look it up on Audioreview.com, people have mostly good things to say about it.
Mark
Thanks Chess. I've been doing a bit of reading on the Anthem MCA line. While there was much talk of "break-in", interconnects, etc..., there seemed some consensus regarding the MCA 20 having a detailed, bright, zingy character. Not what I had in mind. I liked the sound of the Halo-powered/Energy Veritas system quite a bit.
What do you think about the Marantz Mark has? PM me if it's bad.
In reply to:
there seemed some consensus regarding the MCA 20 having a detailed, bright, zingy character. Not what I had in mind.
Try reading some different forums.
The 'character' seems to change all the time.
Another reason why all this talk about SS amps sounding so vastly different is bogus, uncontrolled, subjective and biased opinion. No one can decide on the same 'character' a brand has unless they've all read the same review first.
I auditioned the Anthem MCA30, the Parasound A23 along with a very expensive Coda 10.2 and my Onkyo. You could tell that the Onkyo didn't have the same power levels as the other 3 but soundwise, two of us could not hearing any distinctive differences with my $6000 speakers playing in mono mode and switching blind b/w the amps.(Sometimes audiosnobs use the excuse that your speakers were not high end enought to distinguish the differences. You can also insert pre-amp, cables or any other equipment piece for speakers b/c there just HAS to be reason right?)
Apparently my friend who loaned me the Coda said he wouldn't have expected i would hear a difference b/w those 3 amps and gave me some hack kneed explanation for it. Although earlier in the week he was going on about how the Coda needed to be turned on for 2 hours first and then would sound much warmer than the other 2 amps.
Uh, ya right.
I will see if i can dig up some of the mag reviews on the Anthems. Several that i read were not so snooty and reading b/w the lines basically said things like, "these amps are no frills and plain good". The no frills part (their looks are a little blah) is probably what keeps the cost down.
How about
this Rotel RB-1070.
Or
this RB-1080?
Even if you think the Marantz sucks, you can say so right here...I'm man enough to take it. It sounds good to my ears, so nothing you say about it will make me dislike it, or to retract my recommendation. The unit's successor, the MM9360 150xx6 amp is currently selling for $2799.
Mark
In reply to:
I liked the sound of the Halo-powered/Energy Veritas system quite a bit.
I had some Veritas 2.2's on my Rotel gear and was in love.
Hey Mark, re-reading my above post - I didn't come across right.
Of course you like the Marantz. At the price, w/ the power specs you note, it sounds pretty damn good. I've never heard one. I'm basically beginning my investigation today. When it comes to separates of any type I've only heard a Rotel/B&W set-up and the aforementioned Energy set-up.
What I really want to avoid is any unwanted noise or hum. Does the Marantz or Rotel make a bunch of noise during quiet movie scenes?
The auto-on feature of the Anthem sounds like a good thing; do the Rotel and Marantz have the same feature?
Anywhere to check these manufacturers' power claims?
Thanks guys.
No hum from the marantz that I can detect. It has an auto on feature that basically turns the amp on when it detects a video signal (yes, that's right...you plug a RCA plug attached to the video out terminal of your receiver, dvd player, etc and when it detects this signal, amp turns on). I never use it...I am a power hog and I just leave the amp on all the time...I don't think that this hurts anything. There's also a 12v DC trigger that connects to other so equipped units to turn it on.
Mark
In reply to:
I am a power hog and I just leave the amp on all the time
That's great Mark.
Do you have anything else to confess today that will crush my spirit about hopes for an environmentally conscious society?
You guys are killing me today. Guns, electricity, what's next? Abortion issues?
Please disregard the above post. It's an illusion. Chess really didn't just go there...
Oh Peter, don't get me started again.
The Rotel's have no hum at all. They also feature a 12 volt trigger for powering on and off.
Here are the Rotel specs for the
RB-1070 and
RB-1080. Rotel is well known for their very conservative power specs.
Well...other than whatever it takes to light up that pretty blue LED, I can't believe that a power amp uses very much current if it's not getting a signal...none of my other equipment has the 12V DC trigger, and I listen to a lot of music and I'm not sure my receiver outputs a video signal when I'm listening to music, and the amp cannot be turned on by remote control.
I guess I could try turning it on and off by plinking a round of ammo off it with one of my guns, but maybe I'll just straighten a coat hanger and see if it will reach.
Mark
Hi Big Will !!
Here's a thought ... ubid.com offers Onkyo M282 2 channel amps (strong 100 wpc) into 8 ohms. You can pick one up for about $100 refurbished with Onkyo warranty. I'd grab 3 of them. I've heard these amps using a Sony STRDB 1070 as a processor with 4 M22 like speakers, off brand center and twin subs - sounds really, really good!!!!
These amps are strong and full sounding across the frequency range.
You could always get Outlaw monoblocks for $299 a piece + shipping.
http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/200.html#
That way if you want to later, you can keep adding to the system.
Dave
Mark,
That deserves applause. You bashed all three of Chess's points in one sentence.
I was waiting for someone to get that!
Mark
It gets better every time I read it.
And it all sounds plausible and highly probable!
I really appreciated it as well, but figured I'd just keep my mouth shut. Imagine that...
Spiff, I suppose you know the absolute best place to get one of those Rotels, eh? I must confess, though, that I like the looks of the Anthem, Halo and your old Odyssey over the Rotel's looks.
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.
In reply to:
I just leave the amp on all the time...I don't think that this hurts anything.
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?
In reply to:
How hot does the Marantz get when it's just sitting there with no signal applied?
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..
With my Marantz SR-8300, I have yet to see the cooling fan come on. when I first got it in January, I drove the s**t out of it to give it a good run in - I was in my family room with hearing protectors on and the M60s and the Marantz pumping out almost 100 dB of sound. Doesn't run hot at all.
Sean
Just left accessoriesforless.com. The Marantz looks like a lot of bang for the buck. Like the looks of it too. 44lbs on one of my racks glass shelves? We'll see.
How about the bottom shelf? I had no problems with accessories4less.com. The amp is a lot of bang for the buck, and I think you will be happy. If you're not, I bet you can get almost all of your money out of it on Ebay or Audiogon.
Mark