Adding a 2-channel amp for better stereo cound? Not me, not now!!! (1 Viewer)

[David Smith]

Well, I guess I let the one bad review of my receiver get the best of me. Even though I knew how great it sounded already, I couldn’t help but wonder if it could sound any better.

I own the Marantz SR-7200, and as many of you know, there was a much publicized review stating how under powered it was…something like 27 watts per channel rather than the 110 that the specs say.

I run Paradigm Studio 40’s, CC, 20’s, and PW-2200. My room is shut off and pretty small at about 19x12x8, and I have acoustic treatments at all the mirror points and a BFD to equalize my sub with a ruler straight 10 db house curve from 100hz to 30 hz, then flat from there down to 20 hz.

OK, now for my test. I brought home an Anthem MCA-2 today to try to see what I was missing power wise on my Studio 40’s. I hooked it up to the main pre-outs of my receiver with some nice $100 Audioquest cables and ran the same bi-wired cable to my Studio 40’s that was ran from my receiver.

Well, as I started my testing with some Mapleshade CD’s, I noticed that the sound was somewhat brighter than it was before. Not as good as the Marantz amp sound as far as I was concerned. I then listened to some Dire Straights, Harry Connick, Rush, etc. all with the same conclusion. Now, in all fairness, the Anthem amp had not been broken in at all, so the brightness would probably eventually go away. I will say that when I ran my receiver in direct mode to bypass the sub and run the mains at full range, the mains definitely had deeper, tighter more controlled bass, but only at very high volumes. But, when I ran my receiver in stereo mode with the mains crossed over at 100 hz and using the sub, the greater bass definition was completely un-noticed obviously.

Anyway, to make a long story short, as far as I’m concerned I’m happier with my system without the amp than I was with it, especially since I always use my sub anyway so the slightly better bass is of no concern to me. Now, I’m sure in a bigger room the amp would have made a much bigger difference, but in my small room, the Marantz has all of the amp power I could possibly need, plus the 2 channel sound quality is just downright awesome.

I guess the moral of the story is, don’t let a bad review sway your opinion too much, and don’t always assume that throwing more money into your system will get you better sound. I went into this completely open minded, and I ended up saving $700! Just trust your ears and you’ll be happy!

 

[David Smith]

Sorry, that should be "sound" in the post title...not "cound"! I got a little carried away!

 

[Mike Veroukis]

Very interesting.

I do however wonder what it would sound like if you had studio 100s instead of the 40s. I too own a pair of 40s and have them running off a Yamaha RX-V2200 and I love the sound. Go figure.

- Mike

 

[Mike Veroukis]

Ummm... Ignore this post. Accidently posted the above post twice. I keep doing that for some strange reason. :b

- Mike

 

[David Smith]

I'll tell you, the 100's need the power so much more than the 40's. In the store, the 100's sounded like a completely different speaker with the Anthem. They sounded Awesome! With receiver power it was almost pointless to even try to run the 100's. I think I've heard that the 100's drop down to a pretty low ohm load at a certain frequency, so I'm sure that's pretty hard on a lot of receivers. On receiver power only, the 40's outshine the rest in my opinion.