Need help connecting my amp and speakers

DezUk

DezUk

DezUk

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I have an Arcam Alpha 8 amp and alpha 8 power amp. To go along with this setup I have a set of Mission book shelf speakers. The speakers have two sets of banana connectors on the back, 2 for the bass and 2 for the treble. At the moment I have just the alpha 8 amp connected to the speakers but I am getting a bad buzzing noise. I don’t think I have ever understood how to properly connect the whole system together as the manual doesn’t make it very clear. Here is a pic of the back of the integrated alpha amp

arcam_back.jpg


As you can see it has four connectors for the left and four for the right channels. At the moment I have all four connected up to all four connectors on the back of the speakers with red to red and black to black. With the SP2 switch on the front set to the off the position the buzzing is very bad and is slightly muted when set to the on position. Can someone please explain to hook it all the together?
 
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Heres what you need to do:-

1. On the back of the amp connect the 'PRE-AMP' outputs to the power amp (L to L, R to R).
2. Identify the tweeter inputs on the speakers and connect these up to the amp on 'SP1' (red to red, black to black).
3. Connect the woofer inputs (remaining red and black inputs) to the power amp (red to red, black to black).

If you have a problem finding which inputs are for the tweeters and woofers, you could see what sound comes out of each speaker with just the amp powered up. If you get very little sound and just high frequencies then it is connected correctly (tweeters connected). If you get a reasonable amount of sound and mostly lower and midrange frequencies then you will need to swap the connections around with the power amp (woofers coonected). Check this for both speakers independently.
Forget 'SP2' on the amp as these are seperate (switched) outputs for a second set of speakers for use in a multi-room setup, unless of course you plan on going down that route too.
 
I hope you have removed the 'bridging' strip of metal from between the two sets of speaker inputs*


*
sorry if I have underestimated your skills with this noob suggestion
 
Also make sure you remove the bridging posts from the back of your speakers when bi-amping, otherwise you'll blow both amps up. What model are your missions? Do they have four speaker terminals or just two? Don't use SP2 those are switched which go throught a speaker switch, use SP1 for either treble or bass.

It doesn't matter if you use the A8i or A8P for the treble or bass
 
Thanks for the help with this guys :)

And yeah I did remove the bridging posts between the speaker terminals. I have a set of Mission 771 book shelf speakers which have four speaker terminals, 2 for tweaters and 2 for bass. I'll get this hooked up tonight and see how it goes.

On another note I sometimes think the Missions are too small for this kind of amp setup, what do you think?
 
lol doesn't make any difference. Have used several pre-power systems, Hi-Fi including Arcam. It doesn't matter which is amplyfing which, you could use one for treble, or another way is using one amp per speaker, for example when bi-amping a center.

Have used Arcam 9/9P, and 9 integrated is what I'm using for the PC audio system.
 
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