B&W 683 S2 - Floor standing speakers

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 12:21

Try a few other brands..

I'd definitely add a Poweramp for that Sony avr

sHo0sH · 31 Jul 2018 at 13:41

Type_R said:
Thank you for that explanation that makes perfect sense.

So I guess to power bigger speakers one needs another amp...what would you recommend?

ROTEL sound great when paired with B&W speakers. I got myself a used RA-1080 and it drives my CM9's very well. Very clean, and precise sound with plenty of bass if needed via the contour switch.

crinkleshoes · 31 Jul 2018 at 13:48

Sounds like overkill for the speakers OP is looking at... a £500 AVR to power £1000 speakers is perfectly good enough...

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 13:51

sHo0sH said:
ROTEL sound great when paired with B&W speakers. I got myself a used RA-1080 and it drives my CM9's very well. Very clean, and precise sound with plenty of bass if needed via the contour switch.

Last time I used.rotel bit too boring in sound

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 14:10

crinkleshoes said:
Sounds like overkill for the speakers OP is looking at... a £500 AVR to power £1000 speakers is perfectly good enough...

Well he could look for something along similar specto arcam alpha 10p/3. 3 channel, 100q per channel.

With £1000 is be looking into separates. I use a ATI 2003 and ATI 2004

crinkleshoes · 31 Jul 2018 at 14:58

I'd be much more interested in spending the extra to upgrade the centre speaker.

My ~£500 Denon drove my Kef Q900s well and I didn't notice a huge change going up to a £1500 Marantz... only when the speakers were upgraded too was it worth spending more.

There's also space consideration... and anything more than integrated can be a pain... that's why I went Arcam for the living room as it's mainly home theatre use.

lucid · 31 Jul 2018 at 18:09

crinkleshoes said:
Sounds like overkill for the speakers OP is looking at... a £500 AVR to power £1000 speakers is perfectly good enough...

All we are doing is throwing a spotlight on why the system performance might be more limited than the spec sheets suggest. Is that really such a bad thing?

Yes, it's perfectly possible to drive the B&Ws from the £500 Sony or any similarly-priced AV receiver. In fact, a £30-£40 Class-T amp from Ebay would still work. The point really is how soon you might find the limits of each type of amp. If you spent £40 on an amp to drive £1000 speakers, and found that it didn't sound that good at anything more than very modest volumes, would you be inclined to blame the speakers or the amp? My gut feeling is that most people would look at the amp as the weak link. That's kind of sensible. But what if the amp is supposed to have over 1000 Watts of power and has glowing testimonials from magazines and review sites. What then?

Having a little extra depth of knowledge about what's really going on under the skin of a typical AV receiver makes for a better informed user and buyer.

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 18:40

Also consideration what if a weedy amp clips and fries tweeters. Expensive. So is rather spend money on amps where it'll never clip. And speakers are safe.

For all my speakers replacement drivers are not available.

Since I have 300w on tap hehe clipping will never occur.

Type_R · 31 Jul 2018 at 20:43

Honestly I am not after volume, I’m after quality sound. I doubt I’ll ever get anywhere near the max the amp can deliver to the speakers.

I do appreciate that the more expensive the amp is the more likely I am to get quality sound. But the Sony 1040 was well reviewed at the time and I’m sure they weren’t testing it on £10 speakers

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 21:02

My speakers don't need massive amounts of power as they're 91db sensibility. But what they do need are plenty of drive, they are 4 ohm. Big PSU. Paul weighs 6kg and there are two of them in each chassis. So whatever the load it'll power them. With a avr you'll have a small Pau to supply 7+ channels plus all decoding scaling eq etc.

Most avrs will fail driving 4ohm speakers. Mine dip to about 2 ohm

Find out what impedance is of your speakers across.the frequency range

Nick1881 · 31 Jul 2018 at 21:07

A better or more powerful amplifier isn't just about going louder, it's about effortless sound with dynamics and detail.

I was running 5 x 400w mono blocks but to save space I now run a 7 channel amp that can manage 150w at 8ohms all channels driven, even though my AVR is relatively high range it's still worth running a separate power amp.

Type_R · 31 Jul 2018 at 21:26

The speakers are rated at 25-200W at 8 ohms

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 21:43

Type_R said:
The speakers are rated at 25-200W at 8 ohms

Doesn't mean much what is impedance sweep they could reach down to 4ohm

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 21:54

I do recall a review the bigger b&w to dip to about 3 ohm

Type_R · 31 Jul 2018 at 22:14

hornetstinger said:
Doesn't mean much what is impedance sweep they could reach down to 4ohm

http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/Speakers/Home_Audio/600_Series/683.html

Would something like the Onkyo A-9150 connect up to the Sony and work as an independent amp for the fronts?

hornetstinger · 31 Jul 2018 at 22:28

If you have a avr then you want to use a power amplifier not a stereo integrated amp. Ideally 3 channel so power your mains.ie wmotoca xpa-3 or similar. ATI 1803 etc

Type_R · 31 Jul 2018 at 22:44

hornetstinger said:
If you have a avr then you want to use a power amplifier not a stereo integrated amp. Ideally 3 channel so power your mains.ie wmotoca xpa-3 or similar. ATI 1803 etc

I was hoping for something a little more in the sub £500 range

Schizo · 31 Jul 2018 at 22:46

Type_R said:
I was hoping for something a little more in the sub £500 range

He always recommends items that are way to expensive.

Type_R · 31 Jul 2018 at 22:58

Schizo said:
He always recommends items that are way to expensive.

Anybody else got any suggestions?

Schizo · 1 Aug 2018 at 00:07

Type_R said:
Anybody else got any suggestions?

I'm out of touch with hifi I'm afraid,all boils down to budget and if you want 2nd goods.