Aragon vs. Parasound to power Martin Logans (1 Viewer)

[ling_w]

So I guess nobody here has upgraded from Pioneer Elite to seperate amps recently...or used Parasound amps with Martin Logan speakers? I am leaning towards the Aragon more and more, but cannot get over the extra 115W/ch on the Parasound. I guess I am concerned that I may need another Aragon later just to measure up to the extra headroom that the Parasound will supply. The other thing I like about the Parasound is that it is about 21-2 years old as opposed to the at least 6 year old Aragon. Any opinions?

I don't think you could compare based on power output, especially among different brand and model lines. I have a vintage Krell KSA-80 that is rated at only 80wpc, powering the Magnepan MG-IIIa, a farily low efficiency (86dB/1m/2w) 4ohm speaker. This combo puts many amps with higher rating so shame, including a B&K 150wpc stereo amp and an Onkyo 125w receiver, when using its amplifier. Something like the KSA-80 is rated at 80/160/320/640 watts into 8/4/2/1 ohm, and has been measured to output 3200 watt into a 0.15ohm load.

The Aragon were designed by Dan D'agastino of Krell fame, so there were of similar design, but I don't think they went with Krell's FPB path.

 

[Steven Phipps]

I have calibrated the Front speakers with the SPL meter and the recievers test tone, and a funny thing...I had to put the fronts to +10 to get to 76db, when running off of the receiver, the setting was only +2db, does this sound right? The receiver setting doesn't go above +10. I also found that my receiver won't output surround signals to the speakers unless speaker A is switched to on, I had switched speaker A to off since I was using pre-out for the front speakers. Having to keep Speaker A on, without any speakers being hooked up to the terminals, could this damage the receiver at all? I did find this to be an odd thing, and yes there is still output from the terminals while using the pre-outs. Thanks again...

 

[Steven Phipps]

Anybody?

 

[ling_w]

It isn't an issue that the Aragon requires you to set the mains to +10 to get 76dB level. It is most likely a mismatch between the pio-neer's pre-out level and the aragon's input sensitivity. The Aragon obviously needs alot of voltage for full scale output, which your pioneer does not provide.

With my different 3 different 2ch amp setup in my system, my mains are set to +9, center to +3 and surround to -5. As long as they are within the range of adjustment, it should be no big deal.

If in case, you speaker doesn't produce the required SPL level, then back off the rest of the speakers/sub to match that level, and compensate when listening to reference level is required.

As far as speaker A selection, I assume you still have to have your system power the main room speakers, whether they are the surround or mains.

 

[Steven Phipps]

The Aragon obviously needs alot of voltage for full scale output, which your pioneer does not provide.

Could this possibly effect the quality of the output?

 

[ling_w]

Could this possibly effect the quality of the output?

Only if your preamp clips at 0dBFS signal.

You have to look at the aragon amp and see what its input sensitivity is for full scale output, and compare it to your pioneer. There is probably different voltage gains between the 2 ampfliers.

From what I could gather, the aragons seem to have a 28dB of gain, and produces 1 watt of output with a input of 120mV.