Good value stereo receiver for music

[csplinter]

I bought a pair of Polk Audio monitor 60s on sale, with no plan for what to do with them. When my place of work was getting rid of an old 200 watt insignia stereo receiver, I took it home with me, and have been listening to music with this combo until the other day.

I've got the system in my drum room, so I'm usually listening with a pair of ear plugs in my head. I guess I had it up a little louder than I thought, because one day the sound suddenly became dull, and I realized I had blown a tweeter. Thankfully, Polk is going to send me a new one under warranty, but now I'm in the market for a new receiver that will produce clean, proper power, and prevent this from happening again.

My only requirements are, enough clean watts to properly drive these speakers, and an excellent value, because as I've explained I hadn't planned to buy any of this, and I'll be replacing a receiver that I got for free.

If I could get an option from 2 or 3 price ranges, about $50 apart, that would be awesome. Thanks in advance.


P.S. These speakers support bi-wiring. I don't know much about the subject, but if I understand correctly, I would need amp support to do it? Is this something I should be shooting for? Maybe I'll spend more, if others think it's worth it.

 

[j_garcia]

I wouldn't worry too much about biamping or biwiring those speakers. Any decent stereo receiver should be able to handle those guys without issue, (and by decent I mean Insigina would not be among my choices). The old standbys in my book would be an Onkyo or Harman Kardon. Both have a standard and a higher wattage model, I'd opt for the higher wattage one from either and call it a day. Was there a price range?

 

[csplinter]

Haha, yea Insignia wouldn't have been my first choice.

I didn't say a price range, because I don't have much idea what's out there. I was thinking about something like, "here's a budget one, here's a middle-class one, here's one a little better than that."

As I said, I'm not really familiar with bi-wiring. It was my understanding that it should improve sound quality in some way. Are you saying, with a powerful enough amp, bi-wiring provides less benefits? Could bi-wiring do anything to help me crank the speakers louder without blowing another tweeter, sound quality aside? It does have to be pretty loud, to hear over the drums. Would the tweeter normally go first like that, or was that all the result of an underpowered amp? It's worth mentioning, I never heard any distortion.

 

[j_garcia]

Yes, the tweeter is more likely to go due to the smaller wire and usually smaller gaps involved as well as less ability to handle heat.

The sound quality technically will not change. Biwiring would simply be running two wires separately to each pair of binding posts - effectively the same thing as using a larger wire. BIAMPING (passive) would be using separate amp channels for each set of posts and this will allow for more power to be individually delivered to each portion of the speaker, however this will still not really make the speaker sound different per se, only give more available headroom - which may not even be necessary. Yes, to me just going with more power is a better idea to me. Then there is active biamping in which you would remove the -over in the speaker and make the necessary x-over adjustments prior to amplification which is much more complex and costly.

The Onkyo or H/K should be in the $250-300 range. At $700 you could get an Outlaw RR2150 which has a lot more options and probably a more true 100W rating (meaning a heftier power supply than the others) I believe the H/K has 120w and the Onkyo has 100w.

Then there are integrated amps that are essentially a preamp and amp with nothing else inside, which can be found in a variety of power ranges and prices, but generally will be more powerful than a stereo receiver and cost more. Probably in the $400-600 range there. Less complex, but better amp section. These can be a great value when bought used - check out NAD, Marantz, Cambridge Audio, etc...

 

[TLS Guy]

Haha, yea Insignia wouldn't have been my first choice.

I didn't say a price range, because I don't have much idea what's out there. I was thinking about something like, "here's a budget one, here's a middle-class one, here's one a little better than that."

As I said, I'm not really familiar with bi-wiring. It was my understanding that it should improve sound quality in some way. Are you saying, with a powerful enough amp, bi-wiring provides less benefits? Could bi-wiring do anything to help me crank the speakers louder without blowing another tweeter, sound quality aside? It does have to be pretty loud, to hear over the drums. Would the tweeter normally go first like that, or was that all the result of an underpowered amp? It's worth mentioning, I never heard any distortion.

Bi-wiring is bogus, and is of no benefit. It is just a long jumper between high and low pass filters. Passive biamping is also bogus under the vast majority of circumstances.

 

[highfigh]

I bought a pair of Polk Audio monitor 60s on sale, with no plan for what to do with them. When my place of work was getting rid of an old 200 watt insignia stereo receiver, I took it home with me, and have been listening to music with this combo until the other day.

I've got the system in my drum room, so I'm usually listening with a pair of ear plugs in my head. I guess I had it up a little louder than I thought, because one day the sound suddenly became dull, and I realized I had blown a tweeter. Thankfully, Polk is going to send me a new one under warranty, but now I'm in the market for a new receiver that will produce clean, proper power, and prevent this from happening again.

My only requirements are, enough clean watts to properly drive these speakers, and an excellent value, because as I've explained I hadn't planned to buy any of this, and I'll be replacing a receiver that I got for free.

If I could get an option from 2 or 3 price ranges, about $50 apart, that would be awesome. Thanks in advance.


P.S. These speakers support bi-wiring. I don't know much about the subject, but if I understand correctly, I would need amp support to do it? Is this something I should be shooting for? Maybe I'll spend more, if others think it's worth it.

FYI- many manufacturers wil replace a tweeter once but if it becomes a repeated thing, they usually deny it and consider it abuse. If you launch a woofer AND tweeter, they usually deny teh claim completly. At that point, it would also be likely that the crossover has been damaged, too.

This means you need more, cleaner power. More power with any common amount of distortion will suffice, however.

If you can live without listening to the radio, but a good integrated amplifier. No money has gone into a tuner, so it all goes into what you need- the rest of it. If you can't or don't want to spend a lot of money, buy a used one. There are many brands and models out there and if you read up on them, you'll be able to make a good choice.

FWIW, I have a Sony TA-F500ES integrated amp that's over 20 years old and other than occasionally needing to clean the controls and switches, it has been absolutely reliable. It's rated at 100W/ch and is from a time when Sony's ratings were actually conservative (I have had some Sony amps tested and they all did far better than the ratings) and is very clean sounding- as long as I'm not drawn to listening for flaws in a system, it's easy to enjoy the music and this amp is very unobtrusive. Also, all of the volume/tone controls/filters and source switching are passive, which means they won't add noise because of any circuitry associated with that section. The only part that isn't passive is the video section, which can't be passive. They made other models that were higher power, too. The TA-F700ES would be a good one, too. Some have preamp output, too, and that's something I would definitely look for. I don't have much experience with recent Sony equipment but I don't hear as much good news as I did when I started working in consumer electronics.

 

[TLS Guy]

I bought a pair of Polk Audio monitor 60s on sale, with no plan for what to do with them. When my place of work was getting rid of an old 200 watt insignia stereo receiver, I took it home with me, and have been listening to music with this combo until the other day.

I've got the system in my drum room, so I'm usually listening with a pair of ear plugs in my head. I guess I had it up a little louder than I thought, because one day the sound suddenly became dull, and I realized I had blown a tweeter. Thankfully, Polk is going to send me a new one under warranty, but now I'm in the market for a new receiver that will produce clean, proper power, and prevent this from happening again.

My only requirements are, enough clean watts to properly drive these speakers, and an excellent value, because as I've explained I hadn't planned to buy any of this, and I'll be replacing a receiver that I got for free.

If I could get an option from 2 or 3 price ranges, about $50 apart, that would be awesome. Thanks in advance.


P.S. These speakers support bi-wiring. I don't know much about the subject, but if I understand correctly, I would need amp support to do it? Is this something I should be shooting for? Maybe I'll spend more, if others think it's worth it.

Don't listen with ear plug in. Turn it down. Speakers are blown by too many watts. This myth in these forums that under powering blows speakers persists. That is nonsense. Drivers are blown by playing speakers too loud period.

It is true that if you drive an amp into clipping the tweeter load is increased. However tweeters on domestic speakers are relatively fragile and you have to keep power reasonable, especially when playing pop and rock CDs that have a ridiculously compressed dynamic range where the speakers can't catch a breath. Playing this type of music too loud from amps of any power is what blows speakers.

If you want to play with earplugs, then you need professional horn loaded compression drivers.

 

[PENG]

Bi-wiring is bogus, and is of no benefit. It is just a long jumper between high and low pass filters. Passive biamping is also bogus under the vast majority of circumstances.

Again I wish people who claimed to know electrical theory would stop making such near false statement. I am not going to say bi-wiring is bogus or not, it probably is but it is not just a long jumper between high and low pass filters. It is simply not a jumper. I don't want to repeat details of previous technical debates here but if anyone want to refresh their memory or how electricity works please go to the library and read up on electrical theory instead of going with hearsays and misconceptions that just keep going around on forums.

 

[highfigh]

Don't listen with ear plug in. Turn it down. Speakers are blown by too many watts. This myth in these forums that under powering blows speakers persists. That is nonsense. Drivers are blown by playing speakers too loud period.

It is true that if you drive an amp into clipping the tweeter load is increased. However tweeters on domestic speakers are relatively fragile and you have to keep power reasonable, especially when playing pop and rock CDs that have a ridiculously compressed dynamic range where the speakers can't catch a breath. Playing this type of music too loud from amps of any power is what blows speakers.

If you want to play with earplugs, then you need professional horn loaded compression drivers.

You have never worked in a retail electronics store, have you? I don't think so and if you did, it wasn't dealing with people who didn't know that louder doesn't equal better. Far more tweeters are blown out using low power than with high power and clipping is the reason. The harmonics created during clipping are filtered by the low and bandpass filters in a 2 or 3-way, respectively, so a woofer or midrange won't be exposed to them, unlike a tweeter that has nothing to protect it in the same way. We saw all kinds of speakers that came in with blown drivers and we asked a lot of questions about the rest of their systems, so they didn't have to go through this again. In almost every case, low power was the common denominator and when extremely high power is used, it tends to blow out the woofer. Electrically, it makes sense to think that any driver will blow out from high power but the cause of any launched driver is heat, not the power output of the amp.

The tweeters we replaced weren't always domestic and they weren't always cheap. Shaak Electronics sold a brand called Omega and their 10" 3-way was hopelessly unable to handle any more than about 50W, clean or not. They had a pair of caps hanging on for dear life, suspended from the positive terminal of the woofer with the wires going to the mid or tweeter. Just about every Monday, we had teen-aged guys walking in with a dejected look on their face after killing their speakers in the middle of their big party. We councelled them on how to make them last longer and we would replace the drivers using their original boxes, knowing they couldn't afford to spend a lot on new speakers.

Telling teen-aged kids to turn the stereo down is like telling a fire to stop burning. It doesn't usually work and it doesn't matter that I was telling them this in '78 or if I did it yesterday. I don't know how many times I went through this Q&A-

Q- What's your best speaker?
A- Best, or loudest?
Q- What's the difference?
A- Blah, blah, blah, louder isn't necessarily better, blah, blah, clipping, blah, blah, cleaner sound, blah, clipping can actually damage your ears, blah, blah, your dog will hate you, blah, blah.

 

[TLS Guy]

Again I wish people who claimed to know electrical theory would stop making such near false statement. I am not going to say bi-wiring is bogus or not, it probably is but it is not just a long jumper between high and low pass filters. It is simply not a jumper. I don't want to repeat details of previous technical debates here but if anyone want to refresh their memory or how electricity works please go to the library and read up on electrical theory instead of going with hearsays and misconceptions that just keep going around on forums.

If you are a member of AES, then get this reprint: - 3693, Leebrugen and Scott.

There is extensive mathematical analysis and measurement.

The upshot of no benefit to bi-wiring. And it bi-wiring is a long jumper, you can see that clearly it is from that data.

If you soldered speaker wires to the midpoint of the jumper between the terminals and extrude it back to amp you have just that situation. The resistance of the cable to the high pass we will make R1 and the resistance to the low pass crossover R2. R1 will be the same as R2. Now the current in the high pass filter will be less as it takes less power, so the amplitude reduction of the signal to the high pass filter will be less than to the low pass filter.

Now even with speaker cable resistance of half an ohm, the authors found that the amplitude difference was less than 0.1 db. The linearity of the signal was unaffected, whether R1 and R2 were paralleled. In other words using a single wire pair of half the resistance of a bi-wired pair.

Blinded listening tests were done using experience listeners also, and no difference could be detected between the standard and bi-wire configuration.

The conclusion was that bi-wiring conferred no benefit.

So I think I'm entitled to call it bogus, and so you have to provide credible data and a mathematical basis for benefit.

 

[TLS Guy]

You have never worked in a retail electronics store, have you? I don't think so and if you did, it wasn't dealing with people who didn't know that louder doesn't equal better. Far more tweeters are blown out using low power than with high power and clipping is the reason. The harmonics created during clipping are filtered by the low and bandpass filters in a 2 or 3-way, respectively, so a woofer or midrange won't be exposed to them, unlike a tweeter that has nothing to protect it in the same way. We saw all kinds of speakers that came in with blown drivers and we asked a lot of questions about the rest of their systems, so they didn't have to go through this again. In almost every case, low power was the common denominator and when extremely high power is used, it tends to blow out the woofer. Electrically, it makes sense to think that any driver will blow out from high power but the cause of any launched driver is heat, not the power output of the amp.

The tweeters we replaced weren't always domestic and they weren't always cheap. Shaak Electronics sold a brand called Omega and their 10" 3-way was hopelessly unable to handle any more than about 50W, clean or not. They had a pair of caps hanging on for dear life, suspended from the positive terminal of the woofer with the wires going to the mid or tweeter. Just about every Monday, we had teen-aged guys walking in with a dejected look on their face after killing their speakers in the middle of their big party. We councelled them on how to make them last longer and we would replace the drivers using their original boxes, knowing they couldn't afford to spend a lot on new speakers.

Telling teen-aged kids to turn the stereo down is like telling a fire to stop burning. It doesn't usually work and it doesn't matter that I was telling them this in '78 or if I did it yesterday. I don't know how many times I went through this Q&A-

Q- What's your best speaker?
A- Best, or loudest?
Q- What's the difference?
A- Blah, blah, blah, louder isn't necessarily better, blah, blah, clipping, blah, blah, cleaner sound, blah, clipping can actually damage your ears, blah, blah, your dog will hate you, blah, blah.

I guess you can't make allowances for red necks and bozos. However either way big or small amp they will blow the speaker up. If they have the small amp, they will just blow the tweeter, with a bigger amp woofers and crossovers.

Hi-Fi Sound in Minneapolis had a pair B & W 802 Ds brought in two weeks ago, after a customers teenage children and friends got loose on them. All eight drivers and both crossovers were completely fried. I never have had any tolerance for this pop culture, and have even less sympathy with it as I get older.

So let the OP buy a bigger amp and really fry his speakers.

 

[highfigh]

I guess you can't make allowances for red necks and bozos. However either way big or small amp they will blow the speaker up. If they have the small amp, they will just blow the tweeter, with a bigger amp woofers and crossovers.

Hi-Fi Sound in Minneapolis had a pair B & W 802 Ds brought in two weeks ago, after a customers teenage children and friends got loose on them. All eight drivers and both crossovers were completely fried. I never have had any tolerance for this pop culture, and have even less sympathy with it as I get older.

So let the OP buy a bigger amp and really fry his speakers.

Unfortunately, the rednecks and bozos are the ones people hear and talk about because the ones who don't use the volume control for a steering wheel never come back with their equipment. Then, there are the fathers who come in and yell after their son brought his speakers back, blown to smithereens, and we denied the warranty. The father was actually shouting that his son never cranked his stereo and that the speakers were crap. I let him vent for quite a while in the store and when he was done, I calmly explained that I had the same model (still do) and that his was the only pair that ever came back in that state after we had sold literally hundreds of pairs in a very short period. I explained that his receiver had been eliminated from suspicion and that the only way to do what he did is by going close to WOT with the volume control. I also asked if he was home at all times because if not, he couldn't possibly know if the receiver had been cranked, or not.

I told him that I would try to cover them under warranty that one time (not a problem, since we were Jamo's second dealer in the US and were on extremely good terms with them) and he never did this again. The son approached me at Summerfest less than 5 years ago and asked if I had worked at that store and when I didn't quite remember him, he mentioned that he was the only one to blow up those speakers as badly as he did, about 25 years before. I immediately remembered and he told me that he still uses them.

It's not pop culture, it's kids being kids. Always testing, using things that aren't theirs inappropriately, always going to extremes. Obviously, not all kids will do this but some have always wanted to go higher, faster, louder and bigger. 'More' is their favorite word and to be honest, most of the technical advances we use and enjoy probably wouldn't exist if these people didn't act this way.

Who better, to test product durability? Curious, rebellious or stupid- the products will ever know what hit them but these people are the reason destructive testing is done. I have a friend who worked at the GM Desert Proving Grounds for over 20 years. One of his duties was to take cars out and beat them into the ground the same way people do when they're stuck in mud, snow and ice. WOT forward, reverse, forward, reverse repeated until something brreaks and then take it inside for a diagnosis. Fix it, find any trends and if needed, improve the parts affected and do it again.

 

[highfigh]

So let the OP buy a bigger amp and really fry his speakers.

The way the market has gone (low price being the main reason people buy ANYTHING), dealers resort to "pushing boxes" out the door unless they have an established clientele and a lot of referrals who will only buy from them. The rest don't have time to educate people on the proper use of their equipment, like we did. The owner of the store wanted us to spend as little time with these kids as possible and we stood up to him. He said we were wasting our time by talking with them and we proved him wrong to the tune of tripling the store's sales volume, creating the need for a larger store and turning these kids into some of the stores' best customers- some of whom still go there. Now that we all left, the store is just scraping by in a tiny location with bad demo spaces, poor displays, almost no staff and completely useless advertising.

We educated people so they could enjoy their equipment and it was time well spent.

 

[krzywica]

Unfortunately, the rednecks and bozos are the ones people hear and talk about because the ones who don't use the volume control for a steering wheel never come back with their equipment. Then, there are the fathers who come in and yell after their son brought his speakers back, blown to smithereens, and we denied the warranty. The father was actually shouting that his son never cranked his stereo and that the speakers were crap. I let him vent for quite a while in the store and when he was done, I calmly explained that I had the same model (still do) and that his was the only pair that ever came back in that state after we had sold literally hundreds of pairs in a very short period. I explained that his receiver had been eliminated from suspicion and that the only way to do what he did is by going close to WOT with the volume control. I also asked if he was home at all times because if not, he couldn't possibly know if the receiver had been cranked, or not.

I told him that I would try to cover them under warranty that one time (not a problem, since we were Jamo's second dealer in the US and were on extremely good terms with them) and he never did this again. The son approached me at Summerfest less than 5 years ago and asked if I had worked at that store and when I didn't quite remember him, he mentioned that he was the only one to blow up those speakers as badly as he did, about 25 years before. I immediately remembered and he told me that he still uses them.

It's not pop culture, it's kids being kids. Always testing, using things that aren't theirs inappropriately, always going to extremes. Obviously, not all kids will do this but some have always wanted to go higher, faster, louder and bigger. 'More' is their favorite word and to be honest, most of the technical advances we use and enjoy probably wouldn't exist if these people didn't act this way.

Who better, to test product durability? Curious, rebellious or stupid- the products will ever know what hit them but these people are the reason destructive testing is done. I have a friend who worked at the GM Desert Proving Grounds for over 20 years. One of his duties was to take cars out and beat them into the ground the same way people do when they're stuck in mud, snow and ice. WOT forward, reverse, forward, reverse repeated until something brreaks and then take it inside for a diagnosis. Fix it, find any trends and if needed, improve the parts affected and do it again.

Responsibility is built on the grounds of hard work to attain something that you want.

If its handed to you for free or its someone elses then what do you care if your 16 and want to play with it till it breaks?


To the OP I would suggest this. I have had mine for over 6 months now and love it!

http://www.amazon.com/Sherwood-RX4105-2-Channel-Stereo-Receiver/dp/B0002EPWC0

 

[krzywica]

The way the market has gone (low price being the main reason people buy ANYTHING), dealers resort to "pushing boxes" out the door unless they have an established clientele and a lot of referrals who will only buy from them. The rest don't have time to educate people on the proper use of their equipment, like we did. The owner of the store wanted us to spend as little time with these kids as possible and we stood up to him. He said we were wasting our time by talking with them and we proved him wrong to the tune of tripling the store's sales volume, creating the need for a larger store and turning these kids into some of the stores' best customers- some of whom still go there. Now that we all left, the store is just scraping by in a tiny location with bad demo spaces, poor displays, almost no staff and completely useless advertising.

We educated people so they could enjoy their equipment and it was time well spent.

I've seen that all too often.....there was a Highfigh shop when I lived in Green Bay that I stopped in a few times. The salesman were terrible. They didn't know anything....I would ask about a speaker and he would have to walk up to the display model and read the quick specs off the tag and nothing more. They had some really nice gear that they carried though.

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Crap...I am a redneck, have been called a Bozo on many occasion and Bi-Wire all my speakers.

I think TLS is on to something here...

I guess you can't make allowances for red necks and bozos.

 

[highfigh]

I've seen that all too often.....there was a Highfigh shop when I lived in Green Bay that I stopped in a few times. The salesman were terrible. They didn't know anything....I would ask about a speaker and he would have to walk up to the display model and read the quick specs off the tag and nothing more. They had some really nice gear that they carried though.

Was that HiFi Heaven?

 

[highfigh]

Responsibility is built on the grounds of hard work to attain something that you want.

If its handed to you for free or its someone elses then what do you care if your 16 and want to play with it till it breaks?


To the OP I would suggest this. I have had mine for over 6 months now and love it!

http://www.amazon.com/Sherwood-RX4105-2-Channel-Stereo-Receiver/dp/B0002EPWC0

That's caused by parents not delivering the message that what someone else owns is that persons' property and nobody else has a right to touch it unless invited. Property rights are completely ignored by far too many people and the archaic idea that what someone does comes with consequences has been all but forgotten. When I was a kid, if I damaged something owned by someone else, I was made to tell the owner what I did. I wasn't the type to go around breaking things on purpose, but it still wasn't much fun ringing the door bell and facing the music.

Now that we have completely gone off the trolley, I guess the best advice I can give is:

A) define how the equipment will be used
B) realize that loud music requires more power
C) accept the fact that low power won't be adequate for any use that requires the average power to be near the maximum output of the amp. While music doesn't always have a wide dynamic range now, it has in the past and listening to older recordings will cause the amp to clip, often damaging speakers.

Always use the equipment as it was intended, not as the user wants without regard for the application.

 

[csplinter]

Don't listen with ear plug in. Turn it down.

So let the OP buy a bigger amp and really fry his speakers.

Wow, harsh!

Don't know if I mentioned it, but these aren't electronic drums. It's between killing my speakers and killing my ears! The earplugs are designed for musicians, and supposed to reduce sound evenly across the spectrum. Without them, my ears would be ringing for the rest of the day after 15 minutes. If I didn't have to cut through the volume of my drums, turning it down would be the obvious solution.

I hear what TLS Guy is saying, but I wont make the same mistake again. I'll be building a clipping indicator at the very least.

Point taken, about the bi-wiring.

I know I asked about a budget device, but I'm seeing a lot of suggestions for products that produce half the watts my speakers are rated for. The speakers are rated 200W max. Wouldn't it be ideal to meet this, or go higher?

After considering what's been said, I've decided that I really don't have much use for a radio, multiple inputs, etc. As such, I've been reading about some products like the Peavey PV 900, QSC GX3, and the Crown XLS 402D. I already have an equipment rack, and I need a preamp to hook up mics anyway. What do you think? Sound like a reasonable direction?

Yea I know, it's not really in line with my original request, but after looking at the price and power of some of the av centric receivers mentioned, these seem like a bargain.

 

[highfigh]

I bought a pair of Polk Audio monitor 60s on sale, with no plan for what to do with them. When my place of work was getting rid of an old 200 watt insignia stereo receiver, I took it home with me, and have been listening to music with this combo until the other day.

I've got the system in my drum room, so I'm usually listening with a pair of ear plugs in my head. I guess I had it up a little louder than I thought, because one day the sound suddenly became dull, and I realized I had blown a tweeter. Thankfully, Polk is going to send me a new one under warranty, but now I'm in the market for a new receiver that will produce clean, proper power, and prevent this from happening again.

My only requirements are, enough clean watts to properly drive these speakers, and an excellent value, because as I've explained I hadn't planned to buy any of this, and I'll be replacing a receiver that I got for free.

If I could get an option from 2 or 3 price ranges, about $50 apart, that would be awesome. Thanks in advance.


P.S. These speakers support bi-wiring. I don't know much about the subject, but if I understand correctly, I would need amp support to do it? Is this something I should be shooting for? Maybe I'll spend more, if others think it's worth it.

Why not get a small mixer and a couple of decent mics, so you can use on-ear headphones? That way, you'll be able to play without going deaf, adjust the relative levels to your liking and get some experience with mic techniques. I know on-ear phones aren't always comfortable but many are and some sound very good.