Spec me an amp for B&W 685 speakers

ajstan

ajstan

ajstan

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After this thread, I decided to go to a Hifi shop and demo the warfedales, was very disappointed with the bass and in the end I bought some B&W 685s which sounded great. I wanted to try them with different amps but the shop only had a Rotel RA-04SE which doesn't have a remote - something which I wanted.

Does anybody know an amp that will do the job around the £300 mark?
 
From what i've read, the Rotel is the best match for the B&W's in the budget amp range... So you may well be disappointed with anything else you try with it after hearing that :p
 
In the av receiver world, I wonder to what extent it is neccessary to match an amp's/brand 'undefineable esoteric qualities' to the speaker.

I have listened to an amp in a £4000 price range make the same speakers sound better than an amp in £1000 price range. But i wonder within a given price range wether it is just a matter of choosing the functionality and ensuring that the amp has the power to drive the speakers.

in summary, ive yet to experience such differing 'characteristics' of a brand under controlled circumstances within a given price range, so my reccomendation would be to get the amp with the neccessary drive and your required feature set.

anyone disagree? cos im about to buy an amp too.
 
ginjaninja said:
In the av receiver world, I wonder to what extent it is neccessary to match an amp's/brand 'undefineable esoteric qualities' to the speaker.

I have listened to an amp in a £4000 price range make the same speakers sound better than an amp in £1000 price range. But i wonder within a given price range wether it is just a matter of choosing the functionality and ensuring that the amp has the power to drive the speakers.

in summary, ive yet to experience such differing 'characteristics' of a brand under controlled circumstances within a given price range, so my reccomendation would be to get the amp with the neccessary drive and your required feature set.

anyone disagree? cos im about to buy an amp too.
Click to expand...
When all things are equal, then having some extra headroom because an amp is more powerful isn't a bad thing. However, all things are rarely equal, so I think you have to take a view on a case by case basis.

As an example, I listened to a Creek Evolution 2 CD via a Creek Evolution 2 amp (£500'ish - 75W/ch @ 8Ohm, 140W/ch @ 4Ohm, both channels driven) in to a pair of Focal Electra 1007 (£1600). In isolation the sound was very good. The quality of the amps power supply shows in how it almost doubles it's power in to half the load. But as part of the dem we changed the amp for a Sudgen A21a (£1100'ish). This is a pure Class A amp, so the power output is significantly lower: 20-25W/ch @ 8Ohm. Despite this the sound was significantly better.

Check out the efficiency rating on speakers and you'll see that it doesn't take much power to drive them to a decent level. 1 Watt will produce 86-92 dB of sound pressure at 1 metre with most speakers. Obviously you need more drive power as the listening distance increases, but you'll still only be listening to a handful of Watts.

So, power on it's own doesn't guarantee a better sound.
 
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