Anybody here have one of these amps running with Axioms? What do you think of it? Everything I have read leads me to think it's a giant killer. I came across a great deal on one and bought it. I need it like a whole in the head but I love trying stuff out. It's still in transit so I'm trying to get some feedback prior to me getting it.

i own one...like axiom-its hard to beat in its price range.individual level controlls, peak indicator lights on the front,and a decent amount of power at a budget price ...ron

I believe, in addition to Ron (rcvecc) Doc Orgel (aka mhorgel) uses, and swears by, one. He'll be here sometime today, I suspect.

Where did you get it? How much? THX

Yeah...share...share...

WhatFurrer

i just did a web search and from what it looks like the price went up on these units.not long ago you could have picked one up for about 700 dollars.i couldnt find them at that price now....federalstereo.com has them for 969.00 still a fair deal..imo.....ron

I have one, and I like it a lot. I too, needed it like a hole in the head, as my Onkyo puts out 100 wpc, but I really wanted to dip my toe into separates. I got mine for, I think, $649 or $699 with free shipping (very important, since the beast weighs 44 lbs).

I have never heard a discouraging word about this unit, and am very happy. I must admit to a slight chronic feeling of it being too good to be true, but for the money, I think it was grand theft amplifier.

I listen to a fair amount of DVD-A and SACD, and I have M2's for rear speakers, and I use the MM-9000 to drive my fronts, center, and the M2's (these are the 5 channels I use for DVD-A and SACD playback). My Onkyo still powers my QS4's. I think my Onkyo can drive 2 channels at 100 wpc without breaking a sweat, and I doubt I'll ever need 100 watts for the side surrounds.

One interesting note, all the ads show the unit to be 150 watts x 5, but my owner's manual claims 170 wpc x 5.

Mark

mark-

its been a while since a stupid question from me, so i figure i am due.. i am unexperienced when it comes to adding amps like this for extra wattage. i have the ability with my onkyo 701 to do this, but i truly wonder if it is necessary.. well, here is my question..

if the 701 has 100wt per channel, and then you add the marantz at 150wt per channel, does the wattage 'add' together to make a total of 250wt per channel, or does the marantz take over, and just push its 150?? i have never really cranked the 701 to MAX power, so i wonder if 150wt, and god forbid 250wt, is even necessary?

i need a good sub first anyway, and a new tv.. so the amp will probably have to wait!

bigjohn

John, if I understand this correctly, it works like this. Think of your 701 (6.1 correct?)as a Pre/Pro (preamplifier) with 6 little amplifiers, one for each of your six channels, built into it. There is no amplifier for your sub, which is why most subs (Hsu/SVS/Axiom) come with a power amplifier built in.

Let's assume you get a separate, 5 channel, power amplifier like the Marantz. In essence the Marantz is five little separate amplifiers, one for each channel, in one package. But, the Marantz is only a power amplifier. It has no processing capabilities.

On the back of your 701 you'll find find a group of outputs called "pre outs." There should be 8 of them,one each for your left main, right main, center, left surround, right surround, 2 rear surrounds, and sub. These would be connected to the 5 inputs on your new amplifier, with the exception of the "sub out" which would run to the amplifier in the sub itself, and the 2 rear surround "pre outs" which I'll get to in a minute.

The "pre" in "pre out" means that the signal coming out of those outputs is taken before (pre) it gets to the little amplifiers in your 701. All the processing that your 701 does is still done to the audio signal, but just before it gets sent to the little amps in your 701, the signal is sidetracked via the "pre out" outputs into the little amplifiers in the Marantz. This means you would not connect the speakers to your 701, but to your Marantz.

BUT! You've still got those little amplifiers in your 701 that now aren't being used. Since there aren't enough little amplifiers in the Marantz to handle all your speakers, you can use one of them to drive your rear surround speaker by simply connecting your rear surround to it's appropriate speaker connections on the back of the 701. There are 2 rear surround "preouts" on your 701 which enables you to send your rear surround signal to a separate 2 channel amplifier in case you want a 7.1 setup. However, the signal coming out of the 2 rear surrounds will be the same, not discrete.

Mark has a 7.1 speaker setup, and a 7.1 Onkyo which has 8 "pre outs." He uses the 5 little amplifiers in the Marantz to drive his mains/center/and M2 rear surrounds, by connecting the L&R main "preouts," center "preout," and rear surround "preouts" from the Onkyo to the Marantz, and the speaker connectors on the back of the Marantz to the appropriate speakers. His uses this configuration for SACD/DVD-A. Two of the little amplifiers in his Onkyo power his surrounds (QS8s) which he uses when watching movies. He just connects the QS8s to the surround speaker connectors on his Onkyo.

So, the power for the 701 and the Marantz are not added to each other. They operate separately.

I know the above is complicated, but I hope it helped some. If you find my explanation confusing, I don't blame you. Just ask more questions. I'll be happy to confuse you more

no, that was great.. i understand completely, thanks. i was always curious as to exactly how it worked.. seems kinda simple when you think about it.

i am getting less and less clueless by the day!!

bigjohn

My pleasure. You have unsuspected depths, John! Cripes! The whole thing confused me, and I wrote it.

i have one, and i Fn love it... i will probably buy another one, pretty soon (getting more speakers for my HT... long story.. anyhow, i can not hear any noticeable distortion at all... 0.... this amp is as clean as the 2000$ amps i have in my car.... yeah.. im an audio video freak.... dvd player in the car, with dts surround sound, and a killer HT.. i think?... anyhow back to the topic at hand, this unit can not be beat, i was thinking about buying a krell amp, when i was in the market for amps. but hell, for the money, i could not pass this amp up, sure a krell would have been Fn sweet... but i dont know that the difference in sound quality would have been that great, and the cost between the 2 units would have been HUGE.... sense you already bought it.. your stuck with it, and honestly, i dont think you will have any bad things to say about the unit, once you get it either... like the others of us that own one.... the distortion on this amp, is the lowest distortion out of about 300 amps that i was looking at, the only amp that came close "on paper" was the krell... but again were talking HUGE bucks... and for some speakers that cost 3k... i dont think i want to spend 6-10k on an amp.... god that's kinda long winded just to say that this amp kicks A$$? eh?




youll be happy, bottom line.

I have a stupid question too. Why would both of the rear surrounds in this case be the same? Even if there was a 7.1 discrete source. Does it have something to do with having some of the signal go out the pre outs and some go out through the receiver? Just wondering. Not that I'm any where near having a 7.1 set up with an external amp.

But I can dream!

Thanks for the feedback guys! I have the amp now and will be hooking it up on Sunday and will post back. As for how much, I picked it for $500.00 off of Audiogon.

Well I got it all set-up and you guy's are right, it's a nice amp. I find that with most amps the sound doesn't change all that much but I do hear little things. The biggest thing I noticed with this amp is it has great control over the bottom end. For $500.00 bucks I can't go wrong. I'm not sure on how it will fit into my current set-up but it's staying!

One thing I forgot to mention is that I upgraded the power cord to a Maple Audio. It's one of the few cord upgrades I buy into as I can hear the change. The factory one was ok but the Maple makes it that much better!

its 3 phase ac... the power cord will not make much of a difference... no matter how much you want it to.... trust me on this one... the only thing it can change, is the resistance of the wire, but you still have the resistance of the outlet, and the wire inside of the wall. you spent $$$ on a 3-6 foot cord, which is high dollar, when you have crap wire inside of your wall ( or did you pay 50$ a foot for high grade wire to be strung from the circuit breaker to your amp outlet?)..... so from the junction pole, to the outlet, you have crap industrial wire, then from the outlet, to your amp, you have really nice wire... you think that 3 feet of wire you have is going to make up for the 100+' of cheep industrial wire you have inside of your walls? I'm not trying to bash on you here, just think it out logically…. Where do you think the electricity comes from, that you get at your wall outlet, and how much resistance do you think the wall outlet, to nice wire offers. Several hundred ohms at least… just another gimmick to get you to spend more money on something you don’t need….. but then again I cant say too much, I have monster cable M1 speaker wire going to my M60’s…. but that is after the signal has been amplified… probably a waist, but at least the wire looks nice

yes, I know alot about electricity, and amplifiers. ect..

Dam it man, lay off the coffee! :-) Just ribbing ya!

Yes I have exactly 12 feet of dedicated AC wire going to my HT set-up from a dedicated breaker. I have exactly 40 feet running outside to the box. No poles here! I can go on about the additional steps I took on the AC side of my HT set-up when I built my house including a SPS that powers down my equipment verus it just going click in the event of a power failure and a MOV (Metal-Oxide Varistor) at the line in but I'm not sure it would do any good as you seem convinced and that's cool. I can hook up as many amps as I like and will never see the lights dim etc. I have never heard a ground hum, pop or any other power related problem. I have never had a surge or spike effect the operation of any of my equipment. We get a few of them out here that go well past the standard 2.5 seconds. Everything in my system is dead quite. Let's just say I have never thought it was money wasted. Everything is hospital grade and above and if hospitals require it by code there must be something to it.

A good bud of mine is an electrical engineer for one of our local hospitals and he was kind enough to install all of my electrical. I disagree that AC power has no bearing on the end result only by what people in the electrical engineering side of things have told me. I'm not an electrician and can't argue one point or another on this I'm just passing along what others have said who are not audio people, just electricians and electrical engineers. Do I need a $2500.00 line conditioner? no but having clean and stable power can't be a bad thing.

I installed a dedicated 20 and 15 amp circuit for my system. Both have isolated grounds from the house. I have a panamax 5300 for the 15 amp circuit and the panamax 4400 for the 20 amp circuit (for my amplifiers).

Most audio equipment is designed to operate at specific tolerances + - . You should be fine with the circuits your friend installed.
Someone said something about 3 Phase???? I don't understand.. Most residential electrical systems are single phase unless you own a renovated warehouse.

Anyway,power conditioners are nice if you have noise problems. It doesn't sound like you do.
Also, I'm an electrical engineer (actually a past life). Now I'm an IT professional, go figure.

ac power does have a lot to do with it.. for audio purposes you want as constant ac voltage as possible, so the amp can convert the ac to dc... not many people do what you spent the time to do... running good wire, from your outside line, to the inside.... hospital grade is good... i deal with nuclear grade electronics everyday... so you did the right thing by talking to your electrician buddy.. seems that he hooked you up pretty good, the line conditioners, you only need those if you have crappy ac power going into your house… and if your in a large city, you shouldn’t have those problems….



So, HOW DO YOU LIKE THE AMP already

enought with the eletrical bs.... hows tha amp???!!

The amp rocks! I must admit that it surprises me. In HT it does a bang up job. What really got me was how it is in stereo. Like I posted somewhere above, I have no idea on what to do with it in my current set-up but it's staying!