Will my hk 225 be powerful enough too drive the Rocket 550's and 750's? (1 Viewer)

[David K.]

I currently use Mirage Omni 60's 50's and cc for my home theater.I noticed that when I do bass sweep tests with my mirage speakers, at the lower frequencies, when I manually raise the volume, I hear tiny static pops each time it jumps a notch. I assumed that it was the distortion for bursts of power sent from the amp each time the volume was raise one notch and not clipping. I do not hear it during normal listening. should this be a concern?

here is my current set up with the omnis and measurements
http://www.geocities.com/RnB180/

I want to upgrade to speakers with better sound stage and sharper imaging. Will these speakers provide better quality sound, compared to my Mirage omni's? My Omnis are far too bright for my tastes are the rockets bright sound speakers?

I currently use a harmon kardon avr 225 to drive them,

-Stereo Mode: 70 watts per channel @ < 0.07% thd, 20Hz-20kHz @ 8 ohms
-5 channel surround mode (power per individual channel): 60 watts per channel
@ < 0.07% thd, 20Hz-20kHz @ 8 ohms
-Surround modes: Dolby Digital, DTS, Pro Logic II

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Ive made a decision to upgrade my speakers, I cant afford to upgrade all at once so I will be doing it piece by piece, im looking first at the center rocket rsc 200 first, since the Mirage CC is the currently the weakest speaker in my set up.

the I was considering the 550's, will my hk be strong enough to power it? safely? i want to use those as fronts and maybe the another set of 550's for the rears.

can someone tell me what the sonic difference is between the 750's and 550's? since the center channel uses the same drivers as the 550s I would assume that would be a better voice match?
is it worth the extra $500?

I was also looking into the swans which are cheaper, can some who have owned both swans and rockets tell me the difference between the two?

the swan Center seems to be very lacking in the frequency range, which is why im looking at the beefier rocket CC, Ive also heard that the swans are very power hungry, so I do not think I will use them. thanks!

 

[Victor.Y]

The tiny static pops are your discrete volume control in action. If you have a test tone going, it's probably a pure sine wave. When you increase the volume, and it's in discrete digital steps, the instant it increases you get a pop. Nothing to be concerned with.

Speakers are a pretty personal choice, so you should definitely try to get an audition. There's quite a few folks in Cali, so it shouldn't be that bad. Try out www.audioenvy.com

Rockets are not considered bright, in fact, most people consider them just a tad on the warm side. I personally like that; it allows me to tolerate it cranked up loud more.

Your current amp should be fine if you don't try to wake the neighbors. But the Rockets won't complain with lots of clean power.

One thing to consider is that your rating is for 8 ohms. Under 6 ohm impedance, the amp should put out more power, theoretically. You might want to check the specs. The center channel is 4 ohms, so it might get even more out of the amp.

Both the 750's and 550's should be a nice match to the center channel. They all share the same wonderful Vifa tweeter....

Good luck!

 

[Jon Lane]

The Swan C3 is designed to be compact enough to cover just the common center channel range of 80Hz to 20kHz. Swan designers felt making it physically larger in the interest of gaining lower frequency extension wouldn't be needed in the majority of setups.

At 90 average dB per 1 watt, Swan are also more sensitive than the average speaker, and require less, not more power.

 

[David K.]

my current mirage center speaker only goes to 80Hz and I hate it, its not very good at seperating voices either when mroe then 2-3 people speaker it sounds like a jumbled mess and difficult to understand. And on movies like matrix, Lauwrence fishborne's voice is annoying, since most of it goes to the sub.