Anyone thinking about adding a Amp?

[j_garcia]

I don't "measure" with my ears, but I do trust what they hear.

Not just gain but also one of the reasons people often feel speakers sound "better" with a new amp is that they are able to turn it up louder with less distortion. That's the natural first thing to do...crank it "let's see what this thing can do!" With the correlation being that it sounds better, when in fact it sounds no different and is just louder. That's a perception thing, it isn't wrong because there was an improvement in SPL capability, it is just how it is interpreted by most is that there is a difference in sound IMO.

 

[KEW]

A friend of mine, OTOH, is smitten with the mono blocks and the sound, but he comes here fresh from listening to another system so he gets a closer A/B comparison than I get now.

Why would he attribute the sound improvement to the mono-blocks? Are you running the same speakers in identical rooms? Maybe the MB's look impressive and catch his attention, but unless you have controlled these two variables which are know to be huge influences on sound, it is strange to attribute it to amps which are a topic of much dissension as to whether they make any audible difference!

 

[MrBoat]

Why would he attribute the sound improvement to the mono-blocks? Are you running the same speakers in identical rooms? Maybe the MB's look impressive and catch his attention, but unless you have controlled these two variables which are know to be huge influences on sound, it is strange to attribute it to amps which are a topic of much dissension as to whether they make any audible difference!

My system is geared for music and his is mostly HT. Mine is two channel and he is 7 or 9. His uses auto EQ and I have none and mine is analog. He doesn't leave his alone long enough to listen to it because he's always measuring/tweaking things.

I don't believe the amp differences are that great. I think between source, room, amp to speaker sensitivity match, stereo subs run at normal levels and a more near field exposure, my system is just much better for music overall than his is.

 

[MrBoat]

It's hard for me to imagine this day in time that 120 watts into 8 ohms is not enough for even the largest rooms. Especially considering how many are using separate subs with separate amplification for those. My Adcom is 200w and I barely scratched it's surface for it being twice as much amp as I actually needed, even when I used to listen much louder then. And that was with 3-way speakers handling all of the frequencies.

What has happened that made systems so power hungry?

 

[KEW]

What has happened that made systems so power hungry?

Availability of cheap & powerful amplification?

If your speaker design takes you down a path of choosing power requirements vs SQ, you can choose power whereas that used to not be an option.
Generally inexpensive speaker do not require too much current/power as designers recognize their buyers might not use more than an entry level AVR.