Magnepan mmg w / c: Can HK AVR330 drive them? (1 Viewer)

[Jon Carlson]

Just heard a magnepan 5.1 setup (not the mmg w/c's) over the weekend and loved them. Does anyone have an informed opinion whether an HK 330 can drive magnepan mmg w / c speakers to loud but not insane levels? HK has a reputation for building robust amplifiers, but I don't believe its spec'd for 4 ohm speakers. The Maggies are 4 ohms and relatively inefficient. In a perfect world, I'd be able to justify a more robust amplifier or separates. But the world isn't perfect.

Thanks for your opinions.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

It might but not well. Back when I was running maggies off a reciever (Denon 3300) it did very well with 2-3 maggies and some higher ohm surrounds but when I went to 5 maggies it really showed its limits. I'm not sure though how the HK compares to the Denon (it benched at 83 *5 in the S*V tests)

 

[Jon Carlson]

Thanks for the response - since posting this, I found an s&v review which said the hk330 goes into protect mode when driving multichannel 4 ohm loads at 25 watts, although it did go on to say "real world dynamic signals presented no problem with these low-impedence loads". Oh well.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Jon you might consider trying to find a budget 5 channel amp. The Harmon Kardon PA5800 is usually around $300 on the used market and are solid amps that don't have a problem driving 4 ohm loads all day long. There's a few other budget amps available as well if you keep an eye on Audiogon etc.