Stereo Amplification Advice, Please

[a.bandini]

Folks,

After reading Johnny B's recommendations for quite some time and agonizing over things, I finally took the big plunge and ordered a pair of Mirage OMD-28s from Vann's today. Oh Boy!

The problem is the amplification necessary to get these speakers to do what they are capable of doing. Vann's didn't really have what I think I'm looking for, and this is why I'm asking for your advice. Vann's recommended a couple big ONKYO or Yamaha home theater amps, but I don't need the video switching - my TV is upstairs, and I have an acceptable setup for that already - and almost never watch TV anyway.

So, I'm in the market for a stereo amp of some sort. In the meantime, I'll use my existing Yamaha 90 W integrated amp at low volumes while the speakers break in.

Budget: Around $1500, with some flexibility if really necessary.

I think what I'm looking for is either a pre-amp power-amp pair (like the Emotivas that Armitage and Johnny B recommended back in December), or an integrated amplifier that will allow me to listen to my CDs; will accept the iTunes input from an Airport Express (so I can listen to internet radio), and that will also allow me to hook up a turntable to it, when I take that big plunge. I also have a local radio station that is excellent, so a tuner would be nice (but that station also streams through iTunes, so I could do without, if I have to.)

I like the looks, specs, and price (!) of the Emotiva pre and power amps. The problem is that Emotiva won't have their XPA-2 power amp in stock until April. Their USP-1 pre-amp also looks like a great solution.

The room is 13 by 30, with 8 foot ceilings and wooden floors. Music styles are predominantly guitar-orieneted rock, Americana, Bluegrass, some jazz, some classical. Generally pretty low listening volume unless my daughter is out of the house and I want to play along.

Last thing: I would like to also pump the output to a set of Bose satellite speakers (with subwoofer) in the adjacent kitchen, and also to a pair of small 8 ohm speakers in the basement that I currently power through a "JAMO J554TS" speaker selection switching device. I think I could probably use that to drive the kitchen and basement speakers through a channel B feature, and drive the OMD-28s through a channel A, if whatever I get has at least two channels for speaker output.

So, any recommendations on what I ought to get? I can just wait until the Emotiva becomes available, but if there is no need to do that, if you know of something else similar with more immediate delivery, I'm interested.

I'm willing to buy used gear, if it seems right.

Thanks for your thoughts and time.

Bill

[JohnnyB]

First of all, congratulations and I'm a little bit envious. Those were considered overachievers at their list price of $7500 when they came out.

As to amplification, the first answer that comes to mind is the Anthem Integrated 225.

It's 225/310 wpc into 8/4 ohms. It has a stereo mini-plug input on the front panel for easy connection of an iPod or whatever, AND it has a quality phono preamp. It only has one set of speaker terminals on the back, so if you want to have speaker switching to three different sets of speakers you'd need a separate speaker switching box. OR you could use the Anthem's pre-out jacks to send a line-level signal to another amp or receiver for powering your Bose and Jamo speaker setups. That gives you even more flexibility as you could either send along the signal from the Anthem or use some other source material to send to the Bose and Jamo speakers.

I also highly recommend replacing the factory gold-plated brass speaker jumpers on the OMD-28's with a short snip of good speaker cable. All you need is to get some good oxygen-free copper speaker cable on the roll, buy a few feet of it, cut the cables to size for jumpers and strip the ends to connect via the holes in the OMD-28's binding posts.

You might also consider the 5-channel Emotiva at $899 and use four of the channels to bi-amp the OMD-28's. Add the Emotiva stereo preamp (which also has a phono preamp) and you come in at $1349.

A third, more expensive option (but I've heard good things about these guys) is to get a pair of Red Dragon M-500 monoblocks. They come in at $1398/pair, but you get 250/500 wpc into 8/4 ohms and they're really bad-ass-looking.

They're very energy-efficient and compact--7-1/2" wide and 10 lbs. each. Get an Emotiva preamp with that and you're at $1846, but you have incredible power and current and lots of flexibility.

[a.bandini]

Thanks Johnny!

I've wanted a real, near-audiophile level stereo for literally, decades. I think this one will satisfy that desire. I'm really excited!

I've spent a lot of time reading reviews and opinions, and took your advice. I found an Anthem Integrated deuce and a quarter an hour and a half from me, new, at a very good price and will pick it up later this week. So, I'm off to the races.

I've got two remaining challenges: One is to wait patiently (ha!) for the gear to arrive, and the other is to pay for it. Talk about opportunity costs. Still, with any luck it will last as long as I do, so it should be a very satisfying addition to my life.

Thanks for all the time and effort you took to answer my request for information. I'm in your debt.

Thanks too to the HFC.

Much obliged,

Bill

[JohnnyB]

Soooo... have you taken delivery on your speakers and amp by now? How is it sounding? Still breaking in? Issues? Enquiring minds want to know.

[a.bandini]

Hi Johnny,

Thanks for the enquiring mind!

So far, it is all living up to my expectations, though the speakers are still breaking in.

The Anthem 225 amp made my old speakers sound like new speakers. I was surprised at how much of a difference it made. I got that amp, by the way, from Q Audio in Cambridge MA. (I recommend them, for anyone in the area. The guy who runs it would fit in well here - a great guy, knowledgable, and he helped me out a lot.)

The speakers are also great. I took delivery of the second of the pair yesterday. To be fully frank, it was an open box special, and has some cosmetic issues, so is going back, but acoustically it is fine.

Last night I listened to Kind of Blue, and the last track just seemed especially good. I could hear the saxophone pads as they hit. I've never heard that on a recording before. Tonight Shawn Colvin is singing, and John Levanthal's guitar sounds especially good. I can tell the difference as the speakers break in though. I got them 3 days apart, and the one with the more hours on it sounds much better than the other. The bass for these speakers seems especially realistic, with the midrange and treble getting progressively better as they accumulate hours. The soundstage is taking some tweaking with respect to speaker placement, but so far it is also well beyond anything I've ever heard before.

The speakers look great, and are very well built. I'm impressed by them, and by Vanns, which is quickly addressing the problem I mentioned earlier.

So, I'm trying to fully break in the speakers, and am rediscovering some CDs and the richness in them.

I'll send out an update after everything is fully settled in, but I wanted to say "thanks!" again. I really do appreciate the help, and the recommendations.

Bill

[JohnnyB]

The Anthem 225 amp made my old speakers sound like new speakers. I was surprised at how much of a difference it made.

I remember many years ago when I swapped in a low-powered but high current, wide bandwidth amp for a mid-level receiver. It was powering a pair of 8" 2-way entry-level speakers and the separate amp added significant dynamics and clarity--and about 1/2 octave of bass extension as well.

The speakers are also great...

Last night I listened to Kind of Blue, and the last track just seemed especially good. I could hear the saxophone pads as they hit. I've never heard that on a recording before. Tonight Shawn Colvin is singing, and John Levanthal's guitar sounds especially good.

That's what's so great about higher resolution gear--you don't just hear the music, you hear how the music is being made, and eventually it can lead to a fuller connection between listener and musician(s).

I can tell the difference as the speakers break in though. I got them 3 days apart, and the one with the more hours on it sounds much better than the other. The bass for these speakers seems especially realistic, with the midrange and treble getting progressively better as they accumulate hours. The soundstage is taking some tweaking with respect to speaker placement, but so far it is also well beyond anything I've ever heard before.

The first 100 hours of play-in are important for letting the speakers settle in and stay aligned with the voice coils. If your experience is similar to mine, you'll notice improvements in resolution for the next several months. Easily 6 months (and maybe more) after I got my OMD-15s I continued to notice more refinement, more inner detail, more expressive dynamics. You're also right about the bass in Mirage's big floorstanders. I have a pair of Mirage M5si's (from 1996), which are fairly large (51" tall, 85 lbs each) dual-ported cabinets. A couple days ago I was marveling at how thoroughly and realistically it does the entire sonic spectrum of plucked double bass. Like your OMD-28s, my old Mirages are good down to around 26 Hz.

My favorite thing about the OMD-series soundstage is how realistic it is--it stays stable wherever you are in the listening area, just as it would be in a live performance. I'm also addicted to their realistic tonal balance without artificial crispiness or sizzle.

How are the speakers seated on your floor? Are you using the supplied cone/spikes? Also, are you still using the factory brass jumpers? You'll get significant midrange/treble refinement if you either tri-wire or replace the factory jumpers with quality OFC speaker cable.

[Armitage]

Also, are you still using the factory brass jumpers? You'll get significant midrange/treble refinement if you either tri-wire or replace the factory jumpers with quality OFC speaker cable.

Ok, I love this myth;

That the gold plated brass bar (a copper alloy) at a speaker terminal is acoustically terrible, and even a copper piece of tape, (with magic marker arrows on it no less) or something really exotic is great and makes a hugely audible difference. It’s that “it’s a different type of metal and all…” and that brass doesn’t conduct as well as copper (more on that later). People actually claim to hear electrons as they pass through different metals… but never seem to when tested.

This is IMHO of course, and people can believe or imagine whatever they like.

Let ignore the push in spring metal type speaker connectors usually found on the lower end stuff ...

Lets start with the vast majority of binding posts in AMPS. They are nickel or tin plated brass. Gee.

Also the vast majority of binding posts in SPEAKERS are nickel or tin plated brass too.

Sure, nickel and tin are terrible conductors, Nickel 22 % that of copper and tin has Tin 15%... but it is only a tremendously thin plating.

And real 24k gold is 70%... much better, and it's used because it doesn’t corrode/oxidize like copper and brass does. 14k gold is even less...

Now the vast majority of binding posts after that in amps, are just gold COLORED, plated brass. < not really gold the metal, but a colored alloy, sometimes having a percentage of real gold, most of the time none.

The vast majority of binding posts after that in speakers are gold COLORED plated brass too. . < Gold as above.

The vast majority of binding posts after that in amps that are real gold plated, are still brass. < most "real gold plating" is still an alloy, and when it actually really is gold, many companies do both so they can claim 24k, and you don’t see that the plating rubs off.

The vast amount of audiophile grade banana plugs and spade lugs are this terrible brass too… and that special copper alloy… is usually brass.

The vast amount of audiophile grade banana plugs use a lower conductivity alloy on the leaves to keep it… well, semi tight. The leaves also have a very small surface area of contact and are very thin… It’s not only a theoretical difference, it’s a measurable one… yet audiophiles love their banana plugs. I'm not saying you could hear a difference...

Spade lugs have a larger contact surface area, are much thicker, are theoretically and measure better… yet audiophiles don’t think they’re better… Banana plugs are illegal in most industries and many countries, and we’ve had fun melting down banana plugs hooking them on to one motor phase and a spade to the other…

But being all round better doesn’t mean it’ll make a difference you can hear either… we’re talking pretty small numbers here... but still much bigger then what's to follow...

So clearly, brass doesn’t seem to bother anyone… anywhere else, even in line with the speakers... even where it measures worse… and many things that should matter, still don’t…

Now, one foot of #12 wire is .00187 of an ohm… and the distance between binding posts is usually around 1/10 of a foot… so lets say about .000187 of an ohm, if it was a straight run of wire right through.

Now the bad news… brass conducts only about 28% as well as copper (ooooOOOoooo terrible, right?)… so that means that brass has a bit more then three times the resistance! … Um… that’s still only about .000561 of an ohm for a piece of brass wire…

But people say they can hear the DIFFERENCE between the two! A huge noticable difference... a Wow my room came alive difference... a difference of .000374 of an ohm! And that’s ignoring the bar is usually bigger then the wire (less resistance) and is gold plated to boot! So it’s probably the same anyways!

And while some companies claim their magic wire gives you more high end (less losses), others claim it takes the edge off and lowers the noise floor (a loss… actually it’d have to be a huge loss!!). Lowering the noise floor on the isolated output of a power amp! That would be huge... and how it would select noise vs. music is truely magic.

If you’re worried about it, strip your speaker wire long enough to go through both similar colored posts! It even saves you the terrible loss of gold (giggle)… worries about different metal (gille) and multiple connections (well... that CAN matter)…

And if you worry about the extra inch of uninsulated wire between them, drop a piece of shrink tube on it… and if you don’t actually shrink it… you get that air dielectric many audiophiles get laughed at for thinking has an affect at the freq/voltage/lengths used (… just say it was your plan).

Wow, that's even less then I thought... I gotta check my math... tomorrow. Feel Free to check, it's late and I'm off to a party.

[a.bandini]

Johnny,

I'm still adjusting where the speakers are, so I haven't put the conic feet on yet. The manual recommends doing that as a last step, after everything else is dialed in. I'm a long way from that.

I mentioned, I think, that one of the speakers was an open box special, and was a couple hundred off the newer alternatives. So I took a chance on that, and ended up being dissatisfied with it, so had to ship it back and get a new speaker, which arrived a couple days ago (Vanns was great about this - very helpful and accommodating). However, that reset the burn-in clock.

So I'm still listening and adjusting.

Armitage, Thanks for the analysis. As a EE, your logic makes sense to me. I have a lot of extra speaker wire, so I might bi-wire, but I also think I might try first your last recommendation. I tried to do what Johnny recommended (running wires from post to post instead of the brass connectors, but that kicked my butt since the short segments I was trying to use kept falling out of one post while I tried to insert the other.

One last thing: As a lifelong listener and lover of radio, I'm enthralled with internet radio, and was streaming that from iTunes via Airplay to an Airport Express I was running into an auxiliary input on the amp. That was cool, but every time my daughter logged me out of my account while she went U-Tubing I'd lose the signal. So, I bought a Denon DNP-720AE network audio player, which communicates directly with my wireless router, so I can listen to any internet radio station (and any digital media input I want) without having to get off my dead ass to change the station on iTunes - it's all done from a remote.

It's incredible - it is like having the radio of my dreams. No static, infinite range, infinite variety, and with the right stations, no commercials. How cool is that?

Thanks again.

Bill

[Armitage]

Well as an electrical engineer... you might want to rethink bi-wiring too.

When you use a 4 conductor 14 for bi-wiring... the most common, think of it this way;

If you have four conductors and pair them up at one end only, and have one pair go to the tweeter and the other pair go to the woofer, as in bi-wiring, you've got the full single wire's resistance times 4.

If you have four conductors and pair them up, two together at both ends and the other two together at both ends, one pair going to black and the other pair going to red, you've now cut the resistance in half of a single wire, times two, and considering that about 70% of the audio range's power goes to the woofer, it can go down both cables, and 70% of two cables (at half the resistance no less) is a lot more then 70% of one.

So the only difference I can see, is it’s worse to bi-wire (though insignificantly).

Some people claim the highs and lows interfere with each other as they travel down the cable... even ten feet of super audiophile grade cable... music that was already recorded together no less... yet every day we send signals over tremendously long distances on carrier waves, remove the carrier and it doesn't make a difference. Like FM radio for example. And they can never pick out the bi-wired cables in independent test.

Others have told me it’s the isolation that helps, that a tweeter is more of a voltage device and a woofer is more of a current device, and when the woofer goes thump, the voltage drop on the tweeter has an effect. And like most myths, that makes sense… until you look at WHAT isolation? As you know, on a “theoretically perfect parallel circuit with no resistance,” there is no isolation what so ever… it doesn’t matter where you parallel up, even opposite ends. But as life isn’t perfect and wire has a resistance, #14 has .00297 of an ohm per foot… that’s not much isolation (and that’s ignoring the losses).

And even if it was good enough isolation… you’d be better off running a pair of # 12 to the woofer terminals with something slightly resistive, like… say a piece of brass going to the tweeter terminal… Oh… wait…

I’ve had a few people argue it makes a huge difference for the better (these myths always make things better!) so I’ve offered a simple test. We’d wire the speakers for bi-wiring and use an A.B.B. 100 amp relay to jump out the connectors… and I let him tell me which was better, without telling him where I started, and didn’t even know myself. He/we couldn’t tell… I’ve also done it with others with me and a buddy just sitting behind the speakers jumping them out… Heck, just having two people in a room, behind you, has a huge measurable effect… yet I’ve never found someone who could tell when we walked in the room when the music was blasting.

It reminds me of the latest study on Echinacea for colds. They got a huge group of people and divided them into 4 groups, one got nothing, another a placebo (sugar pill) and told it was Echinacea, the next group were given Echinacea and told what I was, and the last got Echinacea but weren’t told what it was. The people who were told they had Echinacea claimed they felt much better and much faster then everyone else… except that the people who took Echinacea and didn’t know it, didn’t claim to feel any better, and all the measurable symptoms and length of cold were still all the same among all four main groups.

It’s even more interesting that the small number of people who claimed to already be Echinacea believers actually got better faster… whether they took the real Echinacea or the Placebo. So taking Echinacea did absolutely nothing, but believing in it actually did.

Hey, maybe I'm missing something, and of course I don’t have a problem with people believing in something, but I do have a problem with people profiting on B.S. especially when they know it.

[cynic]

You really need a blog...I thoroughly enjoy your posts.