Amp Question and Advice (1 Viewer)

[Jakarta Tom]

I am running a Marantz 7200 Receiver with Paradigm Reference Studio 80s. I dont think they are being pushed enough and am going to add an amp. Here are my questions:

1. The amp a decide on is that amp power added onto the Marantz power or is it seperate: In other words in my Marantz is giving me 105 and my seperate is giving me 100 am I using 205 or just the 100 from the amp?

2. Is about 200 wpc what I need? I am looking to go the 2 channel route.

3. And lastly, how about some suggestions for amps that you all think would be a good fit for me? Thank you so much. Price wise I am in or around the $400-$600 range for a good used one.

 

[RayJK]

Your power is not directly additive but you do have some options. You might be able to bi-amp in one of two ways using your Marantz and an external amp.

The first would involve using an active crossover and this option could only be used if you have "pre out & main in" jacks on your receiver. In this example the signal would come out the pre out jacks into the crossover and then to the main in jacks for the highs and the external amp for the lows. I wouldn't recommend it for this equipment but it may be possible to do.

The second is what is called passive bi-amp and in this case you have to have speakers that can do this and pre-out/main-in jacks. It would say somewhere in your manual if this is an option on the Studio 80's. For passive bi-amp you need some "Y" adapters for the Left & Right pre-out jacks. One connection will go back to the receiver main-in jacks (left for instance) and the other to a channel of the external amp. The same would be done for the right channel. Then the receiver would be hooked up to the (usually) upper set of binding posts to power the mids/tweets and the amp would attach to the lower set of posts to power the woofers.

It all depends on your speakers and receiver if they have the needed connections or not.

As far as power goes 200 wpc is a nice number but is only a 3db difference over 100wpc. The quality difference between the receiver and amp may have more to do with what you hear then the power difference. Of course there is always the chance you won't hear any difference so try to do a demo before you spend your money.