Yamaha vintage amps & B&Ws

[galaxian]

I am a newbie and desperately needing help

I have a ROTEL 1056 receiver and I love the way it sounds with my B&W 600 series. I have a 6.1 setup with 6034S3 (200atts) as the front, 602S3 (120watts) as the rears, LCR600 (150 watts) as the front centre and LCR60 (120 watts) as the rare center. I am currently working on upgrading my setup with a power amplifier. One of the options that caught my eye was using Yamaha vintage amps like MX-600, MX-1000, M-80 etc. They are much cheaper than the new Rotels, Parasounds, Krells etc and I have heard are equally good.

However I have some questions and unfortunately there is not too much info about these amps on the internet except some very positive reviews from some users without any/too much technical details. I have someunanswered questions and would really appreciate if someone can help me make a decison (maybe YamahaLuver himself if its my lucky day :

1. I can see that most of these amps can connect up to 6 speakers but can these amplifiers drive all 6 speakers (A+B+C) at the same time (entire home cinema) ?

2. Would the RMS/WPC would still be 260 Watts, if we take MX-1000 as an example, with 6 speakers driven simultaneously?

3. Would it increase the distortion due to load if all 6 speakers are driven simultaneously?

I am also being careful as I don't want to burn my speakers with an overly powerful amp, as indicated by some. Based on the power requirement of my speakers what would be the way to go for me. Ideally I would love to drive all 6 speakers with a power amp but don't also want to end up with 3 Yammie amps, if possibe without sacrificing the sound too much. BTW I am located in Germany and getting these amps here is no problem. They keep on coming on ebay in all sizes and flavors.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

-galaxian

 

[crashguy]

First, if the amp is say 130w/channel (260w), then thats all you have available. If you hook up 3 sets of speakers to the amp, they will be sharing that power, or have approx 130 divided by 3 = 43w each.

Next, you are FAR more likely to burn a speaker by sending it distortion (overdriving an underpowered amp) then you are by sending them too much CLEAN power.

If you want to upgrade amps, I recommend one two channel amp per set of speakers. Or you could buy two 3 channel amps, or some other configuration.

 

[galaxian]

Thanks for your answer crashguy. However please bear with me as I try to grasp the specifics of these amps:

I asked one of the guys selling an M-80 at ebay the same question and this is what I got:

"It can drive all 6 at the same time, wovever it will still only be a 2 channel amp. It has 2 inputs and no way to turn it into surround. The power would drop to each individual speaker according to how much you divide it, however each channel would still be able to produce 250W continuous into an 8 ohm load, and more into a lower load as mentioned in my ad. I can't imagine their being any kind of audible distortion increase."

What I dont get is that if the "power would drop" how would I still get 250W continuous into 8 ohm load?

Distortion I think is not much of an issue.

One thing that I noticed was that MX-1000 has a power input of 1700 watts or so. That means it should be able to able to deliver 260wpc all channels driven (260 * 6 = 1560 watts). It should have enough current.

Having three of these beasts for rack space, weight, money, heat generated will not be practical and most importantly will not be a wife approved setup

Many thanks in advance for any help.

-galaxian

 

[galaxian]

Ok finally I have got it. The amps have enough current/power to drive 6 speakers but only two channel input. What a waste ......

-galaxian