Amplifier for SVS ultras 7.1 - XPA7/AT1807 etc.

[AcuDefTechGuy]

My friend was using the following for demo:
Carver preamp - Carver CT 24
Naim Nap 90 power amp
Source apple music and flac through inatek BT
NO Audyssey Dynamic EQ setting.

That NAIM NAP-90 Amp seems like a very low power amp - 45WPC x 2Ch into 4 ohms. I saw another site saying it is 30WPC x 2Ch into 8 ohms, which is about right with the 45WPC into 4 ohms rating, which means it is much worse than your Onkyo's 135WPC x 2Ch rating!

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/372438/Naim-Nait2.html#product-NAP 90

So the sound seems to be better with a 30WPC x 2Ch amp vs your Onkyo's 135WPC x 2Ch?

I don't know your room acoustics or speaker placement compared to his system. But something tells me power amp isn't the issue.

Are you sure you are listening to the same VOLUME now vs then?

Volume is a big deal. Even a 1.0 dB difference makes a world of difference in sound quality.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

The model is Quadral Wotan Phonologue

They are 8 ohm rated and 150 to 250 w with 50 w as minimum.

http://www.quadral.com/en/loudspeaker/aurum/wotan/

This page says sensitivity is 88dB/w/m and Impedance is 4-8 ohms, which seems very typical of most speakers.

If you are sitting about 10' away, I don't see why your THX-certified 135WPC x 2ch Onkyo can't easily power these speakers, especially if your friend was using a 30WPC x 2Ch amp.

Any chance you could borrow his 30WPC amp?

 

[adatrao]

That NAIM NAP-90 Amp seems like a very low power amp - 45WPC x 2Ch into 4 ohms. I saw another site saying it is 30WPC x 2Ch into 8 ohms, which is about right with the 45WPC into 4 ohms rating, which means it is much worse than your Onkyo's 135WPC x 2Ch rating!

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/372438/Naim-Nait2.html#product-NAP 90

So the sound seems to be better with a 30WPC x 2Ch amp vs your Onkyo's 135WPC x 2Ch?

I don't know your room acoustics or speaker placement compared to his system. But something tells me power amp isn't the issue.

Are you sure you are listening to the same VOLUME now vs then?

Volume is a big deal. Even a 1.0 dB difference makes a world of difference in sound quality.

I have treated the room with carpets. And I was listening at full voulme of my AVR

 

[adatrao]

http://www.quadral.com/en/loudspeaker/aurum/wotan/

This page says sensitivity is 88dB/w/m and Impedance is 4-8 ohms, which seems very typical of most speakers.

If you are sitting about 10' away, I don't see why your THX-certified 135WPC x 2ch Onkyo can't easily power these speakers, especially if your friend was using a 30WPC x 2Ch amp.

Any chance you could borrow his 30WPC amp?

I will try but he is on vacation n will be back after 4 weeks.

 

[PENG]

Hi
Recently I purchased the Quadral phonologues speakers from a friend. When I did the demo at his place with an amplifier it was amazing. but when I brought them to my home and hooked up to avr NR 818 ( just removed the ultra towers wires and placed the phonologues in their position) I did not get the same effect. They did not sound so good. Then I felt that amplifier is required to make my system sound better.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

(I read that thread of yours and still could not completely understand the concept. )

Aside from the need to carefully level match the amplifiers being compared, and set to pure direct mode with no sound processing whatsoever, for a proper comparison, the speakers need to be placed in the exact same locations (even in the same room is not good enough). Obviously the source media and media players also have to be the same. It is hard to do a proper comparison, but it is a fact that even moving the speakers a few inches, or if one amp is 1 dB louder, the resulting difference will be noticeable.

 

[KEW]

My friend was using the following for demo:
Carver preamp - Carver CT 24
Naim Nap 90 power amp
Source apple music and flac through inatek BT
NO Audyssey Dynamic EQ setting.

The Naim Nap 90 power amp is rated at 45WPC into 4 Ohms, so your 818 certainly provides more power. I think you can rule out the amp as being the reason it sounds different.

I assume the Carver CT 24 is an old school preamp with bass and treble controls (and maybe loudness). You might ask if he used the tone controls or loudness for your audition to determine if the preamp settings affected the sound quality.

 

[KEW]

... I was listening at full voulme of my AVR

Are you sure?
If you ever ran the 818's setup routine, it would have set the volume for whatever speakers you had when you ran the setup.
For example, if you had run setup very efficient speakers, it would set the AVR such that full volume might only use 20% of the available power.
At full volume, if it did not sound too loud, I think something else has to be going on!

If you are not sure but not worried about losing any settings you may have made, follow this instruction:

To reset the AV receiver to its factory defaults, turn it on and, while holding down CBL/SAT, press ON/STANDBY. “Clear” will appear on the AV receiver's display and the AV receiver will enter standby mode.

This will eliminate any previous settings which might be the source of your (I assume) low volume level.

Also, make sure your source is not feeding an overly weak signal to the AVR. Try another source to make sure.

 

[KEW]

Listening at full volume...
Was it very loud, but sounded distorted?
Or did you still want more volume?

Quadral recommends their A3 amplifier (which is not as powerful as your 818) for you speakers, so again, you should be good for power!
http://www.quadral.com/en/high-end-electronic/aurum-a3/

 

[adatrao]

Are you sure?
If you ever ran the 818's setup routine, it would have set the volume for whatever speakers you had when you ran the setup.
For example, if you had run setup very efficient speakers, it would set the AVR such that full volume might only use 20% of the available power.
At full volume, if it did not sound too loud, I think something else has to be going on!

If you are not sure but not worried about losing any settings you may have made, follow this instruction:

This will eliminate any previous settings which might be the source of your (I assume) low volume level.

Also, make sure your source is not feeding an overly weak signal to the AVR. Try another source to make sure.

Yes this can be probable because some other loads are connected to this source like oppo 103d, a htpc and a Pb13 ultra.

I will disconnect these and again run the setup from beginning as I have not any specific settings other than running the Audessey XT32.

Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[adatrao]

Aside from the need to carefully level match the amplifiers being compared, and set to pure direct mode with no sound processing whatsoever, for a proper comparison, the speakers need to be placed in the exact same locations (even in the same room is not good enough). Obviously the source media and media players also have to be the same. It is hard to do a proper comparison, but it is a fact that even moving the speakers a few inches, or if one amp is 1 dB louder, the resulting difference will be noticeable.

Actually what baffled me was that such a tiny setup of my friend could make the quadrals sing with a source fed by a mp3 song over Bluetooth. Whereas in my case I used the CD directly with OPPO 103d to feed the AVR and still the sweetness n loudness were missing.
That’s when I assumed that an amp might be required for my setup.

 

[adatrao]

Listening at full volume...
Was it very loud, but sounded distorted?
Or did you still want more volume?

Quadral recommends their A3 amplifier (which is not as powerful as your 818) for you speakers, so again, you should be good for power!
http://www.quadral.com/en/high-end-electronic/aurum-a3/

It was not distorted but the clean/crisp sound was lacking...something that I can’t clearly say but there was no life in the music leave alone the loudness.

 

[KEW]

Yes this can be probable because some other loads are connected to this source like oppo 103d, a htpc and a Pb13 ultra.

I will disconnect these and again run the setup from beginning as I have not any specific settings other than running the Audessey XT32.

Thanks for pointing that out.

You really don't need to disconnect other sources.
Most AVR's will allow you to adjust the volume of each source independently (look under Audio > Source in the menu structure).
Again, if you do the reset, that would eliminate any concerns that your Oppo input had been turned way down before.
I would do the reset before running Audyssey. The worse case is your AVR was setup with Audysssey with different speakers in a different room, so Audyssey is working against you.
Doing the reset should get you a simple amplification of the source, and it is useful to know if things changed significantly from eliminating Audyssey (indicating the problem was with your AVR settings). If running Audyssey eliminates (or helps) the problem, you will know that room acoustics were the biggest factor.

 

[lovinthehd]

How do the rooms themselves compare? If you simply plugged your speakers into the existing calibration of XT32 without rerunning it, that's the first step to correct (or take out of the equation), that could be why you could stand full volume (and what volume scale are you using, absolute or relative and what was the reading for "full volume")?

 

[adatrao]

How do the rooms themselves compare? If you simply plugged your speakers into the existing calibration of XT32 without rerunning it, that's the first step to correct (or take out of the equation), that could be why you could stand full volume (and what volume scale are you using, absolute or relative and what was the reading for "full volume")?

My room is bigger by 30%.
I missed running the calibration again for the new speakers. I iwll do this today. Thanks for pointing that.
I am not thorough with ablsolute vs relative volume, however I turned the volume knob to max until it takes the input.

 

[adatrao]

You really don't need to disconnect other sources.
Most AVR's will allow you to adjust the volume of each source independently (look under Audio > Source in the menu structure).
Again, if you do the reset, that would eliminate any concerns that your Oppo input had been turned way down before.
I would do the reset before running Audyssey. The worse case is your AVR was setup with Audysssey with different speakers in a different room, so Audyssey is working against you.
Doing the reset should get you a simple amplification of the source, and it is useful to know if things changed significantly from eliminating Audyssey (indicating the problem was with your AVR settings). If running Audyssey eliminates (or helps) the problem, you will know that room acoustics were the biggest factor.

Thanks Kurt, I will do as you suggested and post the feedback by tomorrow.

 

[PENG]

Actually what baffled me was that such a tiny setup of my friend could make the quadrals sing with a source fed by a mp3 song over Bluetooth. Whereas in my case I used the CD directly with OPPO 103d to feed the AVR and still the sweetness n loudness were missing.
That’s when I assumed that an amp might be required for my setup.

If mp3 in your friend's room using his amp and sounds so much better than CD direct from Oppo 103D in your room using your Onkyo 818, then the possible factors could be the following.

- not only due to your larger room, but also different shapes, and acoustic characteristics (carpet, wall material, furniture, drapes and curtains etc.)

- locations of the speakers in the room, examples: corner, distance from side and back walls, toe in angle etc.

- wiring error.

Even if all of the above are good, the biggest factors such as those listed below can easily explain your experience:

Different rooms - acoustic characteristics will be very different.
Different time - auditory memory of humans are short (longer than 5s is too long) and unreliable.
Different listening level - even 1 dB difference can make a difference.
Different source media and player - Comparing the same music recording/mastering in different formats, that is mp3 and CD is bad, if the source music is different, that is different songs in different places, that is much worse.

Is it possible to borrow your friend's little amp? That would be easiest way to find the truth, but to me, and I think others such as KEW and ADTG, will agree that any attempts to compare loudspeakers in different rooms at different time using different music and formats are futile.

If you have some spare time, below is a good read for you before your next serious listening comparison session.

https://hal.univ-brest.fr/hal-00638418/document

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Since you have a subwoofer, after you reapply Audyssey XT32, try using Dynamic EQ, Offset Zero.

Dynamic Volume should be turned OFF.

I think Dynamic EQ will get you the Dynamic lively sound you want.

If Dynamic EQ isn't enough as is, there is another trick.

The digital trim levels (speaker channel levels) also control the amount/magnitude of Dynamic EQ. manually increasing each speaker channel level by +1.0 or more (like going from 0.0 to +1.0 or +2.0) will increase the effect of Dynamic EQ. So increasing the trims by +3.0 or more will increase DEQ effect even more.

Also, for my Personal taste, I also prefer to keep my Subwoofer and Center trim levels a little hot by +3dB.

The key is to experiment a little. You can always turn the settings back to original.

 

[lovinthehd]

My room is bigger by 30%.
I missed running the calibration again for the new speakers. I iwll do this today. Thanks for pointing that.
I am not thorough with ablsolute vs relative volume, however I turned the volume knob to max until it takes the input.

Bigger room could definitely have an effect as far as differences go, as well as how the rooms are furnished (assuming neither room is an acoustically-treated room).

After you run the calibration then you can set your volume control to either the relative or absolute scale, then when you share volume levels we have a better idea of what it is. Here's an article for a different brand of avr, but the same principal applies. In general I wouldn't say simply turning the volume to it's max level is a good idea (unless you set the max volume level setting appropriately), you can possibly inflict damage that way....

 

[Bala]

HI there. What is the current situation? what did you finally decide on?

 

[eirepaul]

You have 4 variables: 1) speakers, 2) amps, 3) pre-amp/pre-pro, 4) Room Acoustics.

Did you also buy his Preamp or Pre-pro? What was he using?

He could be using something with Audyssey Dynamic EQ which could make the sound more lively and "dynamic". But that's not the Amp itself! It is the Processor!

Also, his room is not the same as your room. So it may also sound differently.

But my guess is that his Processor may be what's different. Different sound settings.

In most cases I've encountered (most people sit less than 10' away), the Amp is the LEAST of the variables.

Agreed that room acoustics and processing setup certainly make a difference, but all things being equal, when pushing most receivers with all channels driven they run out of juice before you want them to. A separate multi-channel amplifier will provide higher dynamic range and higher headroom, but only if you want substantial decibel levels. Otherwise a receiver (that has a quality amp) can be fine at moderate sound levels.