Good amp to pair with Jim Rogers JR Metro Vintage Bookshelf Speakers?

[locoaction]

Hey, hope all's well

Slight audio amateur here - I picked up some Jim Rogers JR Metro Vintage Bookshelf Speakers on Ebay recently, through a friend's recommendation.

It's the ones pictured below, I believe - though they've had the foams replaced.

I'm looking for a good amp to pair them with, as my old one is busted. I'm looking to preferably buy something new rather than on Ebay - my priorities are a) that it will all work OK in terms of voltage, as I'm really not an expert, and b) that the sound will do the speakers justice. Budget is about £200.

I also wanted to check: would I be OK to connect the amp to the speakers by stripping the ends of this cable? As I say, this side isn't my strong point.

Any help much appreciated - thanks

 

[BMXTRIX]

That wire is a 14 gauge wire and should be fine to drive those speakers without any issues at all at typical distances for left/right speakers.

No amp recommendations from me. I do find the used amplifier market to typically be of much better value overall, but I'm not sure what you have available to you or what you intend to use as a source or if you want to connect things to a television as well. Some details of your intended use case would be helpful. I always have my speakers connected with a television as well, or they are part of my distributed audio, so I have surround receivers (Yamaha) and Rotel amps that I picked up used that sound great. Rotel stuff, even used, may be a bit over your budget.

 

[Eppie]

Modern amplifiers (even vintage for that matter) have a very flat frequency response from 20Hz to 20kHz so the amp should not have any particular sound profile, except as what relates to their tone controls. Concentrate more on features and performance. If you can find the sensitivity rating of the speakers, you can use this SPL calculator to estimate the needed amplifier power, assuming you don't exceed the rated speaker power handling by too much (which is more a function of listening level than available power).
https://myhometheater.homestead.com/splcalculator.html

Think about your audio source material. Do yo plan to use digital sources like streaming or FLAC/MP3 files, or will it be analogue like vinyl and cassette? Do you want to hook up your TV as well? For digital and TV material, an audio video receiver (AVR) like BMXTRIX mentioned is good value for the money. Denon and Yamaha are the most popular. You don't need to use all 5 channels of a 5.1 AVR, you can just use 2 and have the option to add a subwoofer later as most have bass management and a subwoofer line out. If this is for audio only you can look at integrated amps but the pricing tends to be about the same. Modern amps will have digital and analogue inputs so think about what types of connections you needs, whether it will be HDMI or whether you just need USB, coax or Toslink. If it's analogue only then you're open to just about anything depending on what's available in your area.

In terms of voltage, are you referring to line voltage in the UK or the pre-amp out voltage being sufficient to drive the amp to rated power?

 

[locoaction]

Hey both - thanks for your replies!

In terms of how I'd use it, I don't have a turntable set up at the moment, so it would be TV or music (from laptop, so digital source) via an aux cord.

In terms of voltage - I guess I mean the amp being sufficient to drive the speakers, yes. That side of things is pretty alien to me!

 

[Mikado463]

IMO if you're gonna buy new you need to increase your budget. I'm not familiar with the specs of those speakers but I would guess that 50-100 'stable' watts would be sufficient.

 

[Eppie]

Most AVRs will have 70W to 90W per channel which should be sufficient to drive those speakers. £200 won't go very far for new gear. For a Denon or Yamaha or Sony AVR they likely start around £300. Be very careful of the used market. You don't want anything too old or outdated. It must have HDMI inputs and most will have Toslink (optical) inputs which can connect to a TV as most large screen TVs have optical out. For the laptop, the 1/8" audio jack used for headphones will not have very good sound quality. Most laptops have cheap DACs (digital to analogue converters). It will work, but it's better to try and get a digital signal to the AVR and let it do the digital to analogue conversion, or get an outboard DAC connected to the USB port on your laptop and connect it to an analogue input on the AVR. With a laptop there are also streaming options. A modern AVR will connect to your home network and if it has streaming support (like Yamaha Musicast or Denon HEOS) then you can stream wirelessly from your laptop to the AVR. This usually requires a mobile phone with the Musicast or HEOS app installed for controlling your source material.

 

[locoaction]

Super useful responses - thanks!

 

[MrBoat]

I'd probably just buy one of the Fosi audio desktop amps with the 48V power supply for use with a laptop or cell phone. They will also have Bluetooth for portable use. I would then use that with those speakers and if you are serious about audio, move up to more modern speakers and power upgrade accordingly.

I don't hold much faith in rebuilt speakers unless the rebuilder does it for a business and has a good rep for it, or unless I did it myself.