Recommend an amp

eman66

Trying to decide on an amp for an 8 ohm 5.1 set up. Looking for 130w plus. Anybody got a similiar setup they are happy with?

Idleater

eman66 wrote: »

Trying to decide on an amp for an 8 ohm 5.1 set up. Looking for 130w plus. Anybody got a similiar setup they are happy with?

130w is an interesting figure.

My power amp for surround channels is a Rotel 1565 and drives 8 or 4 ohm surround speakers nicely.

Personally I'd front load the power if possible as most of the work is done by the front L/R (I use a 1072 for this) and possibly centre channels.

akaSol

One hundred and thirty watts is a bit vague, are you looking for market "130w" or pure 130w?
For example yamaha new rxv781 is rated for 130w at 8 ohm, but when you read the spec this is what you find : Maximum Effective Output Power (1kHz, 1ch driven) (JEITA)160 W (8 ohms, 10% THD) Dynamic Power per Channel (8 ohms) 130 w
That's basicly RMS for AV, so it will take a whack up to peak volume without the amp exploding.
Pure 130w is all channel driven, this gives 130w to each of the 5/7 channels as each one has a dedicated Amplification circuit. It's also reserved for the pre / power styled AV.

Most people go for the market AV style, in this case I am very fond of Yamaha's warm tone and mostly solid build, they have two ranges rxv (usually sub €1k) and the rxa (usually above €1k) and designed for dolby atmos . Speakers, depending on the overall budget & size I would be looking at the B&W MM's(fairly small, relatively expensive ) the Q Acoustics QA 3000 av set ( bookshelf , but relatively inexpensive) Wharfedale DX1 SE5.1 (bookshelf, inexpensive). If it's more "boom" sound your looking for and have the room maybe chuck a pair of floor standers up front, Q Acoustic do a floor standers AV kit.

eman66

Cheers. I have monitor audio apex set which an onkyo 709 (at 110w) really struggled with. Looking at the rxv781 here http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/av-receivers-amps/rx/rx-v781_u/?mode=model it's listed at 110w also. I was reallly disappointed with the 709 and when the hdmi board failed on it I just chucked it in the bin and went back to the the onkyo 805 it replaced. That was better at 130w so that's the baseline in terms of wattage for me.

I have pretty much discounted yamaha as they look to be the least value in terms of watts per euro.

Idleater

you could add an external power amplifier and use the pre-outs?
A 5 channel 100w (real) for the surrounds and leave the main unit just power the fronts ?

eman66

The 805 is on it last legs so needs replacing. For a dummy, how do power amps and such mysterious things work?

akaSol

eman66 wrote: »

The 805 is on it last legs so needs replacing. For a dummy, how do power amps and such mysterious things work?

The twin system of a power amp and processor work in the following way:
Processor takes the HDMI or Digital Signal into the main unit with an output .
The amplifier takes the input from the processor and outputs it to the speakers in the required format ( amplifier in this case is dumb it will just pass the sound which is sent from the processor like Dolby digital HD or dts-ma straight to the speakers)

mossym

your problem isn't the 110w rated per channel on the onkyo. your problem is the onkyo won't get anywhere close to that in reality. if it did there would be no issue driving the speakers. it's several years ago, but independent testing on one of the onkyo's think it was the 805, found the real power number to be less than 30w/channel, don't ask me to find it now, but a srech over on avforums might locate it .

so i wouldn't be looking for 130w/channel, i'd be looking for an amp that gets close to its claimed output. Denon or yamaha would fit the bill, jsut avoid the very budget units.

i wouldn;t go down the route of an external amp, despite the advice above. if you had a very current avr with all the latest features, then that might be an option. but your amp is old, and you'd be better off getting an integrated unit with newest features.

eman66

mossym wrote: »

your problem isn't the 110w rated per channel on the onkyo. your problem is the onkyo won't get anywhere close to that in reality. if it did there would be no issue driving the speakers. it's several years ago, but independent testing on one of the onkyo's think it was the 805, found the real power number to be less than 30w/channel, don't ask me to find it now, but a srech over on avforums might locate it .

so i wouldn't be looking for 130w/channel, i'd be looking for an amp that gets close to its claimed output. Denon or yamaha would fit the bill, jsut avoid the very budget units.

i wouldn;t go down the route of an external amp, despite the advice above. if you had a very current avr with all the latest features, then that might be an option. but your amp is old, and you'd be better off getting an integrated unit with newest features.

Cynical old me had assumed that they were all at the fanciful power output claims! You reckon not then, that Denon and Yamaha are ok? I was guttted after spending £800 on the 709 to replace the 805 and finding it such a weak performer. Don't want to make the same mistake again.

I don't think I will go down the separates route for budget reasons.

mossym

they all play the same games to be fair. the tricks they play are fairly well known so not telling any secrets here

1) they claim a per channel rating, and because there are 5/7/9 channels everyone assumes each channel has that power. however, most always the per channel rating is with only that channel driven, and is limited by the power supply, which is shared with all channels. so when you drive one, it gets 110w .when you drive 7, the power is shared among them all, and i f you put out a pure sine wave (most power hungry) on all channels the power on each would be a fraction
2) they use specific testing patterns of input signals which maximises the power output, but once you put a different signal through it'll drop awy
3) they spec in peak rather than continuous,and will have a big capacitor as a charge backup, so you can get a lot of power for a very short time, but once the cap is discharged the power drops.
4) they are very careful with their loads. no difficult to drive loads, fixed frequency/resistance so that you don't get any unknowns.


like i said, they all do it. onkyo, for a while at least, just seemed to really push the limits on their lower units, anything up to the 8x model. the bigger units were okay. yamaha and denon had lower end units with some pumped up numbers as well, but they always had a bit more oomph than their onkyo counterparts in my experience. i had denon amps for a while, a 3803, a 3805, a 3808, and they all drove my B&W 6xx series speaker which i had at the time no problem. and they are more difficult to drive than the MA set you linked to.