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Suggestions for a Multi-channel amp ????

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I'm in need of an amplifier to power my center channel and two surrounds for my HT system. Being of the basic belief that most multi-channel amps have been cheated when it comes to power supply, my intention was to buy a 5 channel amp and only use 3 channels. This should allow plenty of dynamic headroom. For an idea of what the rest of the speaker and amplifier system that it will be going into consists of, here goes:

My left and right mains consist of AR-9's. These are large 4 way 5 driver towers. Each cabinet has two 12" side firing sealed woofers running from 200 hz down. The front panel has an 8" lower midrange, a 2" dome upper midrange and a 3/4" dome tweeter. These are being biamped with a Perreaux PMF-3150B driving the woofers ( 600 wpc @ 4 ohms ) and another PMF-3150B driving from 200 Hz & up. If your not familiar with this specific amplifier, it is definetly on the warm and mellow sounding side with awesome bass.

The center channel is a sealed homebrew MTM design that lays on it's side. The appr. sensitivity of this speaker would be about 90 db's or so and is quite neutral in sound quality. At this time, the surrounds are Kinetic Audio Zoids. These are 8" vario vent woofers with a 1" soft dome. These are subject to change, but the appr. sensitivity of these or the speakers that would replace them would be about 88 db's or so.

Given the low sensitivity of most of these speakers, i know i need a good amount of power to drive them and keep the system balanced. The center is 3 - 4 ohms, so the amp must be stable and not have a hard time with this. The surrounds are closer to 8 ohms right now, but as i said, these may go the way of the wind.

My basic thoughts were that i wouldn't mind an amp that was slightly forward sounding. This could add a small amount of added intelligibility to voices for the center channel. It should also be capable of at least 150 wrms @ 4 ohms for the three channels that i need. If the other two channels are rated for slightly less, that won't really come into play in this situation. Cosmetics are secondary, but i don't want some nasty looking thing either. Since this is strictly a secondary system, i would like to spend as little as possible to achieve these goals.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome. If you don't feel comfortable posting here, feel free to email me. Sean
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Topic - Suggestions for a Multi-channel amp ???? - Sean 22:39:09 04/19/00 (6)


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