Sherbourn 5/1500 and a Jolida tube amp (1 Viewer)

[Bruce Chang]

What I want to do is use a 5 channel amp to power my mains, center and sub. Use a 40wx2 Jolida tube amp to biamp the mids and highs on my mains. The Jolida has adjustable gain control, but the sherbourn does. Would the sherbourn and jolida match each others output gain? I'm afraid that the sherbourn will not match the jolida or vice versa. Seems like most integrated amps have gain control. What are some $1000 and under integrated amp that is 200wx5 and bridgable?

 

[Charles Gurganus]

I just don't see this working. I guess you meant the Sherbourn does NOT have a gain control (I have it as well). The Sherbourn will be much louder than the Jolida more than likely and matching them would be very difficult. I understand you want the tube sound for music but have you tried biamping your mains with the Sherbourn? I biamp NHT VT2's with the Sherbourn and it is great. Lots of clean bass. What speakers are you using?

 

[Bruce Chang]

I will be using the Paradigm studio 60s. When you mean biamping don't you mean biwiring? Biamping is done with 2 amps or like the sunfire amp has 4 sets of outputs (2 for mids and highs, 2 for mid bass).

 

[Bruce Chang]

Here's what Ron Fone said,

Dear Bruce:

I am not familiar with your particular preamp BUT I have yet to come against a preamp component that does not work well with our 5/1500.

Best regards,

Ron Fone

Should I go for it?

 

[Dan Driscoll]

Bruce,

What Charles was talking about really is bi-amping. Using 2 channels from the same amp is the same thing as using 2 channels from different amps. In the Sherbourn each channel is completely independent and has its own input and output. (FYI, this is not the same thing as using the A>B outputs on a receiver. In that case the one input is driving one amp to supply 2 outputs.)

FWIW, Ron Fone was referring specifically to pre-amps, the Jolida is a tube based power amp. Whether or not you can bi-amp your 60's with the Sherbourn and the Jolida depends on several factors, the most important being the gain curves. When bi-amping you want the gain curve of both amps to track very closely to each other so that the outputs of the 2 amps increase and decrease by the same amount when the volume is changed. Another issue is whether or not the Jolida is powerful enough to keep up with the Sherbourn when listening at or near reference levels. The good news is that it doesn't take nearly as much power to drive a tweeter to 96dBA as it does a woofer. But the only way to know for sure if this will work for you is to hook everything up and try it. Since the Jolida has adjustable gain controls, you may be in luck, especially if you don't listen at reference levels.

One advantage of using the Sherbourn (or other good multichannel amp) to bi-amp is that each channel will have an almost identical gain curve. If you use 2 channels to bi-amp each main speaker you can then use the 5th channel to drive your center speaker and maintain both gain and timbre matching across the front soundstage. The drawback is that you won't get the warm highs and vocals that a tube amp like the Jolida will provide.

 

[Bruce Chang]

Thanks Dan. But, I still need power for my 15 inch sub which requires at least 2 channels from the sherbourn. so 2 channels for the mains and 1 channel for the center. I cannot biamp the sherbourn because I need the channels for the sub. I'll try to see if it will match. Wish me luck.