Controversial choice or product?

[Kristoffer Svendsen]

Have any of you made a choice in your setup that you always have to explain or reason? A product that makes people roll their eyes maybe?

I can go first: I really like the Behringer A800 amplifier. It’s by no means the best sounding amplifier I’ve ever heard: But for the price, I haven’t found anything that comes close. As of now, I use it to power my desktop bookshelf speakers. I have the gain set to max (using balanced TRS-XLR cables from my audio interface) and it’s dead quiet. No hiss at all. As a student (up until recently) this amplifier was a no-brainer. Plenty of power, okay SINAD numbers and overall decent sound quality. It retails for 3000 NOK here in Norway (which is roughly 300$/€) and I haven’t really seen anything usable near it’s price point. I haven’t tested it on Arendal speakers yet, but I’m going to this weekend and I’ll let you know the results.

 

So tell me: Have any of you made similar questionable choices? Do you know of any decent amplifiers around the same pricerange? I’d love to hear them!

 

 

 

 

Attachments:

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[laurence-chan]

Behringer is known as a Pro Audio company.  Similar companies with amplifiers like your A800 are Samson, QSC, Crown, ART, LEA Professional, Peavey and even JBL.  All of these companies have a few believers in the home theater world and they swear by a few models in their respective power amplifier lines.  You apparently stumbled on to a Pro Audio amplifier that performs well with your speakers, especially at the price it looks like a good deal.

[Kristoffer Svendsen]

Completely agree with you, Laurence. The A800 is geared more towards studio use than normal PA use, not that it really matters.

Once I can afford higher-end stuff, I’m definitely upgrading. I’m personally really interested in the ICEpower AS Amplifier modules, but not many manufacturers have started using them yet. They measure REALLY well, and have great SNR and dampening factor. That, combined with the crazy amount of power they can deliver looks to be a great recipe for an excellent amplifier. They don’t measure as well as the Hypex NCore modules, but the Hypex’ are also way more expensive.

[Lukas]

It is a little bit of a hit or miss with those PA amps.
I feel they don’t always have the best consistency in production.

I have an IMG Stageline STA-2000D amp at home. It uses very high-end Pascal class-D modules, but the overall build is not the best. One channel has a slight crackle, the others are fine. So even though the modules a great, the rest of the amp is not letting them perform to their full potential.

What I am saying is, not only look at the used module but the surrounding build as well.

 

 

 

 

[Raffaele Spataro]

Kris, my thoughts completely I own some Crown XLi amps and they perform flawlessly, but just like Lukas mentioned above its a hit or miss with these type of amps. I got sold on how much headroom they give for a fraction of the price vs Expensive and high end quality. But then again its all about budgeting your HT room and what you want out of the system. I literally went from a Yamaha 7.1 system rated @75Watts per channel 8Ohms driven to now on Separate amps rated @750Watts 4ohms driven. Its all about you and what you prefer.

[Luis Vazquez]

For sure… in my previous HT setup, I had DIY speakers and subwoofers.  My guy friends loved the look and sound, but their wives would always shake their heads… pointing to their husbands, they would say, “Get no ideas” or simply say, “Not happen in my house.”  On the flip side, my wife would ask the wives… “Why not? They sound pretty good to me.”.

I’ve had similar reactions to the beige acoustic panels on the walls in our previous home… it never ended.

When we moved, I vowed to leave the living room alone and build a new system in my home office.  Now I need to explain the reason for a dedicated room.  Our new friends typically ask, isn’t a sound bar enough?  Again, call me lucky, but my wife comes to my defense as she loves this hobby as much as I do.

[arkmann]

Purchased a Cambridge SoundWorks system for my first home theater.  Had a center channel and 2 wall-mounted fronts wired to bass boxes on the floor and 2 wall-mounted surrounds.  Powered by a Yamaha AVR with various theater and music settings through its sound processor.  I loved the sound but the family didn’t like the home theater.  They Thought it was too loud and didn’t appreciate the sound quality.  Hi-fi isn’t for everyone.  Some people are fine with TV speakers and ear buds or a portable bluetooth speaker for music.

[brian-w]

I think every part of my system has some rolling eyes regarding my choices/preferences. Why I have a Denon 6700 and am using it as a pre pro. Why I have 4 pb3000 svs subs. Yep, there are better subs out there. The big one that drives friends in this hobby nuts, my source. I use an Apple TV 4K gen 2 for my music, tv, and movies. It’s hard, I have a huge library of movies purchased through iTunes and Apple does improve the quality from time to time. I would love one of the Uber expensive movie players if I had an extra 10 grand to spend, but then I would want to add a high end music streamer as well… then only used Apple TV for… tv and streaming apps? For now it is so convenient and affordable to have it all in one spot. I would love suggestions on other tech for sources that cover tv, streaming, music, movies.

[Greg W]

My controversial choice is an AVR with no external amps.  The Integra DRX-8.4.  Some audiophiles would no doubt scoff at doing that.  I bought it because it has XLR pre-outs giving me an upgrade path.  However, I found that its internal amps are plenty powerful enough, especially for Arendals which are not difficult to drive.  The Integra will do 100W per channel, all channels driven.  So I never did get separate amps.