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Amp and speaker synergy…

Jezzer

Unspecified
I was shot down for suggesting that pairing a £500 Rotel A11 amp with a £2,200 pair of PRoAc DB1s would be a mismatch as the amp wouldn’t do the ProAcs justice. Maybe I was wrong? What are other fishies thoughts on this? And amp/speaker matching in general?
 
Proac DB1 : your amplifier will make them work, a Sugden A21 will make them sign and a Supernait will make them rock (to a certain degree) so huge potential from these little speakers.
Best thing is to give them a try and see if it suits you well but one thing is for sure, it’s a lovely speaker.
 
I am sure they work but you may find that going up the price scale brings improvements. Whether, you like them or not is a different matter.

I am using a little NAD7050 for amp/dac duties at the moment with KEF Reference 3.2's. I am amazed at how good they sound.

This is £800 driving £2,250 speakers when new. Replacing with new versions would be closer to £10k.

It is replacing a VTL valve pre and large XTC power amp which is in for repair. I haven't been missing this duo as much as I thought I would apart from pining for my turntable. It will be interesting to see how I feel when they are slotted back in.

The fact that you have the opportunity to explore is always a plus in the world of hifi enthusiasts!
 
No reason why it couldn't sound good, but no doubt the speakers would scale up with better, more expensive amps. Rotel are renowned as quite clean and neutral amps though, so I do wonder whether the synergy would be on point.

Have you moved on the Tablette 10s in favour of the DB1s by the way?
 
If it works it works, I've used budget amps with more expensive speakers and vice versa. You could easily find that one £2K amp could be worse than the Rotel, it's equal or much better, I'm not convinced that price alone is much to go on. Personal preference plays a big part.
 
No reason why it couldn't sound good, but no doubt the speakers would scale up with better, more expensive amps. Rotel are renowned as quite clean and neutral amps though, so I do wonder whether the synergy would be on point.

Have you moved on the Tablette 10s in favour of the DB1s by the way?

I’m keeping the Tabs as they’re lovely. Reason I ask is that I had responded to another thread where the poster asked about pairing a Rotel A11 with the DB1s. Now, I’ve often paired less expensive amps with more expensive speakers. Sometimes the results were great. Other times not… Synergy comes to mind.

I once tried a Rotel RB-911 with a Response 1SC. The results were pretty poor… But better with a pair of Dynaudio Contour 1.3mk2s. I remember using a cheap 30wpc Harman Kardon HK630 amp to drive the Dynaudios (with a Marantz CD6000 KI Signature front end) and the results were punchy and lively but ultimately lacked detail and refinement.

I think many people would be happy to ‘mismatch’ their components. There are no rules that stipulate that all your bits must be similarly priced, but I think I’d be missing out if I had speakers as good as the DB1s (or other similarly priced) and was pairing them with an affordable amp.
 
A11 cracking amp for the money £2k speakers better match with RA-1572 or X3 better choice

I went from a Creek Evo to a Rotel RA-1570 with my Proac 150s, result better defined, deeper bass and a more natural mid and high frequencies. 1570 was a bit of a punt but 5 years on I've no desire to change it unless I can seriously upgrade the whole system.

Cheers BB
 
What is the logic behind saying that it costs a similar amount to build an amplifier and a pair of loudspeakers of similar quality?

Retail prices does not always refer to cost.

Sometime you can comfortably pair expensive amps with cheap speakers.
Sometime the other way round.

Sometime things just don't gel together

I don't believe there's a generel mismatch in sheer money but sometime in kit.
 
Indeed! I went from a naim nap250dr that cost me £3100 from the dealer, at a very good discount off the RRP to a Dynavector HX75 that cost me a quarter of that and is 20 years older, to be blown away by the sound into my Compasses. They just came alive in a way the 250dr could only dream of!
That all said, I am hoping to be trying the EWA M50 very soon, so that should be very interesting!
 
I see nothing wrong with your suggestion of Rotel and Proarc, ok you might want to improve the amp as your next upgrade, but I'll refer you to JANDL, a well known forum member, he has used £10k+ MBL's with various amplification all costing substantially less to great effect :)
 
A £3200 Supernait 2, which at that price I expected to be my final amplifier, was ousted by a 1999 Audio Analogue Puccini SE bought on a whim for £245...

Not so much a question of synergy - both amps were perfectly capable of driving my then speakers - just that I liked the sound of the AA much more than that of the Naim.
 
To be clear the OP was actually referring to an earlier thread of mine where he had stated that something like a Hegel H390 would have been a mismatch for the (my) DB1's. He wasn't shot down, I simply asked him to elaborate on how he had concluded that an amp costing £5k could be 'too good' for a pair of speakers costing £2k on the basis of cost alone.

I respect his view but don't agree - as other posters have pointed out earlier in this thread it's entirely plausible to achieve a system you like where the elements are mismatched in terms of cost.

That's just my view as I feel the notion of 'spend more get more' is just pure marketing UNLESS you feel it sounds better.

However, my point/question was based on the fact that I see numerous opinions that cite one piece of equipment being 'too good' for another based purely on the RRP and nothing else. I am very much of the view that, if it sounds good then the cost is absolutely irrelevant.

If I read many of Arkless' comments then I am kinda with him that in a normal listening environment most amps (regardless of the cost or wpc) will drive any speaker adequately. He's far more knowledgeable than I am in discerning, technically, what constitutes a 'good' amp from a 'bad' one. My standpoint is that of a layman and, personally, I buy into very little hifi hype.

I was (and still am) considering something like a Rotal A11/A14 or Yamaha A-S801 for my £2k speakers and I am not driven (sic) by the price point - more by how they sound and how long they will last.

We all have differing views I guess.
 
Match your speakers to your room and use a power amplifier that is capable of driving them to your required spls without clipping.

One good reason for buying a powerful power amplifier is that it is far less likely to clip when you turn the wick up. It is far easier to kill speakers by driving them with an amp that clips before it hits their max power handling than by putting too many Watts into them, IME.
 
A £3200 Supernait 2, which at that price I expected to be my final amplifier, was ousted by a 1999 Audio Analogue Puccini SE bought on a whim for £245...

Not so much a question of synergy - both amps were perfectly capable of driving my then speakers - just that I liked the sound of the AA much more than that of the Naim.

That doesn't surprise me at all.
 


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