Extra power

[John T]

I have a Marantz SR8012 and I am thinking about adding an amp and was curious if it makes sense.the Marantz SR8012 will deliver 140w to all 11channels driven.and the amp I would like to add is 180w .5 channels driven.

 

[NINaudio]

What are you trying to achieve by adding an external amp?

An extra 40 watts isn't going to do much in terms of spl. If you're just looking to offload amplification duties to something external to prevent heat buildup in your AVR, then it will do just that.

 

[j_garcia]

what speakers are you driving, how big is the room and are you hearing distortion right now? If you don't currently hear some sort of limitation at the levels you are listening at, an amp won't exactly improve anything.

 

[lp85253]

What are you trying to achieve by adding an external amp?

An extra 40 watts isn't going to do much in terms of spl. If you're just looking to offload amplification duties to something external to prevent heat buildup in your AVR, then it will do just that.

A $10 fan will do the same thing , as I'm quite sure you know.. Just wanted to get that out there, i wasn't implying anything...

 

[Gmoney]

I have a Marantz SR8012 and I am thinking about adding an amp and was curious if it makes sense.the Marantz SR8012 will deliver 140w to all 11channels driven.and the amp I would like to add is 180w .5 channels driven.

Whats your setup? But yeah adding a amp will take the load off your AVR let your AVR drive some of your surrounds. Which amp your looking at?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

The Marantz SR8012 will deliver 140w to all 11channels driven.

It absolutely will NOT deliver 140W to all 11 channels driven.

But it does NOT need to, not even using 11Ch Stereo mode and especially not while watching movies with Atmos or DTSX.

 

[Trell]

It absolutely will NOT deliver 140W to all 11 channels driven.

But it does NOT need to, not even using 11Ch Stereo mode and especially not while watching movies with Atmos or DTSX.

So I can play pink noise all day long

In real life you are absolutely correct!

 

[lovinthehd]

If you're worried about the slight difference in power between the two sets of amps, not a big deal if you integrate it properly. Like most audio situations, merely limited by the lesser unit, but all a 40wpc increase means is a 1.1 dB advantage (at least at 8 ohms), the external amp may be able to handle lower impedance duties better, tho. Taking a load off your avr's power supply is a consideration but not a huge one (as was said if excessive heat is an issue external cooling could help). ACD spec isn't very important as was pointed out.

What speakers are you using and at what distance? An spl calculator may help estimate needs http://myhometheater.homestead.com/splcalculator.html

 

[John T]

I have a Marantz SR8012 and I am thinking about adding an amp and was curious if it makes sense.the Marantz SR8012 will deliver 140w to all 11channels driven.and the amp I would like to add is 180w .5 channels driven.

My front stage ,RF7lll ,RC64lll.room is 19 ×12

 

[John T]

My front stage RF7lll RC64lll I only wanted to increase power to these three.room is 19 ×12

 

[ryanosaur]

Running Klipsch? Even though the Big K likes to fib on their sensitivity ratings, they are still above average in sensitivity.
Considering that in any multichannel usage, Denon & Marantz claim a 70% guarantee of rated power being available to all channels. I've never fully understood this to mean that even in Multichannel Stereo when all channels are basically being driven the same... but I digress...
Considering Klipsch claims 100dB sensitivity for your Mains... lets re-rate that to a conservative 95dB.
64w @ 1m will yield a whopping and ear-bleed inducing 113dB!
If you sit 3m (~10') away in a medium sized room with some boundary reinforcement, you will still be experiencing SPLs exceeding Reference Level Dynamic Peaks!
If the 8012 is rated 2-channels at 140 w, and you get 98w per channel with their 70% guarantee, you still have a few dB headroom to utilize and completely deafen yourself with.

Do you need an Amp? Likely, no. If you really want to buy one, go ahead. However, in my opinion, all you are doing is buying unnecessary Headroom. If driven within Spec, I think all of us here tend to agree that amps will not, AND Should Not, alter SQ.

 

[Pogre]

Those are pretty sensitive speakers. Your 8012 has more than enough power to let them get to some pretty high spl. The only real advantage with external amplification would be lightening the load on your avr, which isn't a bad thing. I wouldn't expect any kind of audible improvements tho.

How far do you sit from the speakers, and did you play with that calculator HD posted a link to? It won't be accurate for every speaker but it gives you a good idea of the relation between power, distance and volume.

 

[lovinthehd]

Why do you want to increase power to these speakers particularly?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Yeah those RF7iii towers are very sensitive and your Marantz should be just fine.

Each tower has dual 10” woofers. So if you want to give them more power, it would be for those.

I thought about getting these at one point to try something - remove the jumpers and “actively” power those dual woofers with a separate amp like I would power a passive dual 10” subwoofer. When you do this, it is essentially treating those dual 10” woofers like a subwoofer by connecting the LFE/Subwoofer Outputs of the AVR to an external amp then to the bottom speaker posts of the RF7iii.

The reason for wanting to do this is from my experience with RBH Sound towers and Legacy Audio towers.

If you don’t want to do what I would do, but you still want to passive bi-amp your RF7III anyway like a lot of guys, there is still some potential “benefits“, but I doubt it.

 

[John T]

Why do you want to increase power to these speakers particularly?

 

[John T]

I figured since they are my front stage,I could benefit from the extra power and just have my avr.power the surrounds rear and heights

 

[lovinthehd]

I figured since they are my front stage,I could benefit from the extra power and just have my avr.power the surrounds rear and heights

But why do you think the front stage needs more power? Is this a sub-less system or you listen at extremely high levels or ? What distance from the speakers do you sit? Have you used the spl calculator? In the end of course you can just buy the amp because you want it, take some work off the avr, and all that, but.....