Amp for Monitor 70's

Bdyllius

I have recently bought the Monitor 70's, CS2, and monitor 30's. I would like to know what amp will have clean crisp sound for all speakers. I would like both detailed sound, as well as dramatic for large action sequences in movies. I would preferebly like a seperate 5ch amp from the receiver. Also i Have read that the newer D-class amps use less power and produce just as much juice, without sacrificing sound quality. Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

tonyb

Ice amps have a different sound to them so best to try and get an ear on them first. What receiver are you using ?? The M70's are pretty darn easy to drive with most anything, can't really see an amp as being a necessity, unless your receiver is pretty low powered in driving all channels. Then again, if it is that low powered, chances are it doesn't have preouts to add an amp anyway.

Systems

Maybe look into a Marantz or HarmanKardon they are high current...or SoneyES..The new Pioneer amps (ice) are class D..like Tonyd said they do sound different..not bad..just different..I have the M70,s and they do well with a high current amp output.

Systems

@Bdyllius..here check this link out it will help you understand more on how amps...and the defferent class's are done and put into sound..hope this helps you out ..http://www.audioholics.com/education/amplifier-technology/10-things-about-audio-amplifiers

Bdyllius

Thanks for the response guys, i am going to look at that link. I am new to this thing, i am currently using an old crappy Sony reciever, that why i plan to go to a preamp, and seperate amp. I have just moved into a house so i want the sound to fill the room and seem life like. It sounded fine in the apartment i had, but now its in an 18x16 room.

Bdyllius

I have seen two i like. both very different from eachother. I like the Wyred 4 sound mini mmc, and the Emotiva xpa-5. Dont know which would have better longevity, and sound. Any feedback?

cnh

Good advice above. I run an M-70 HT system myself. Harman Kardon, Marantz and Pioneer Elite are all good choices. But I also like my old Onkyo 805--good power, by itself, for M-70s and supporting cast (in terms of current models, power-wise this is more like an Onkyo TX-SR 3008/ or 3009 (if that's out yet). However you should 'listen' to all of these and others to see which sound 'you' like.

It sounds, though, as if you're considering separates? For HT, a good AVR with pre-outs and a nice multi-channel power amp would be good enough, IMO. And the M-70s always benefit from a little more power (though reasonably efficient for a tower they really open up with more power).

Have fun!

cnh

cnh

Again, you should get your ears on these. But Wyred 4 Sound is 'good' stuff!

cnh

Esreuter

CTank

You mentioned that the Sony es receivers have a bit more juice than the regulars.


I have one of those, a 5600ES, I was wondering if you know of any place that has bench test data available. I have always been curious about what my true watts per channel is.

I have a multimeter, I can not remember if it has watt capability, its in storage with the rest of the stuff as we are PCSing. ( we get our house aug 30, thank f'in god.) do you or any one know the way to measure the channel output with a multimeter?

would love to know what i gots @ all channels driven, and its nice to see that my AVR is at least offering more than the standard models.

I tell ya it will be a blessing to get every thing back in the house

thank you all for your input.

ESR:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

dcmartinpc

If you are thinking about the XPA-5, you owe it to yourself to at least check out used 5 channel amplifiers. Parasound HCA-2205a, Rotel RMB-1095, Sunfirr Cinema.... All amps worth looking at. I am a self proclaimed Parasound evangelist, and that is the one I would go with. Any of these amps will outperform the Emotiva IMHO. If you are not opposed to used. The nice thing about these amps or the Emotiva even, is that you go go up the food chain speaker wise and not need to replace your amp.

Don

Systems

dcmartinpc...is rigth on about Parasound,.Rotel..and (Sunfire..amps)..i feel are much better then what i have in my UPA-1's..don.t get me wrong..I like my UPA-1;s a lot..but if i could get a SunFire amp new?..in heart beat i would...cnh..said about the Onkyo 805..it is a really really good avr..if you can find one you may pick it up for 200 or 300 bills..

Systems

Esreuter wrote: »

CTank

You mentioned that the Sony es receivers have a bit more juice than the regulars.


I have one of those, a 5600ES, I was wondering if you know of any place that has bench test data available. I have always been curious about what my true watts per channel is.

I have a multimeter, I can not remember if it has watt capability, its in storage with the rest of the stuff as we are PCSing. ( we get our house aug 30, thank f'in god.) do you or any one know the way to measure the channel output with a multimeter?

would love to know what i gots @ all channels driven, and its nice to see that my AVR is at least offering more than the standard models.

I tell ya it will be a blessing to get every thing back in the house

thank you all for your input.

ESR:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

..the meter you have is it a Fluke meter?..at one time way back i had an RS meter that you could run your speaker wire's too then too your speakers and the meter would tell you what your draw was from your speaker's..thats as far i would go with measuring something like that..maybe one of the old timers in here will chime in that know's more about how you go about using a multimeter on something like that..some of them old timer's in here are great with multimeter use.very good question you ask..i would like too know too.

dcmartinpc

dcmartinpc wrote: »

If you are thinking about the XPA-5, you owe it to yourself to at least check out used 5 channel amplifiers. Parasound HCA-2205a, Rotel RMB-1095, Sunfirr Cinema.... All amps worth looking at. I am a self proclaimed Parasound evangelist, and that is the one I would go with. Any of these amps will outperform the Emotiva IMHO. If you are not opposed to used. The nice thing about these amps or the Emotiva even, is that you go go up the food chain speaker wise and not need to replace your amp.

Don

Wow, my internal spell check and grammar filter must have been off yesterday!

Don

piker

Here's how my situation was. I started with an Onkyo TX-SR606 and Polk M50's, and then got some M60's. These all sounded great on the 606. I then sold my 606 to a friend and got the TX-NR808. Everything sounded even better.

After a while I decided to get me some of the M70's for the front and the M60's were moved back to rear duty. The M70's sounded horrible IMO running on the 808. I thought the M60's sounded way better. For whatever reason the 70's sounded muddy and weak, as if all the clarity was gone. I figured it was because they were being underpowered.

I purchased the XPA-5 from Emotiva and it made a big difference. The midrange, which I felt was completely missing, was now back and the dynamics came alive in movies. I watched Inception on blu-ray and I actually jumped at the part where a guy gets hit by a car, even though I saw it was about to happen. I wasn't expecting the deafening thud that came out of the front sound stage.

So even my 808, which is a higher powered receiver, wasn't providing enough juice when driving 5 speakers. Not sure why some of these Polk members are saying the M70's are easy to drive, because they really aren't. Not unless you are only running them in stereo, because in stereo only I'm sure the 808 would be good enough. For home theater use, with 5+ speakers driven, you really need more power.

Check the power requirements on the M70 and you just know that anything under 100watts a channel is definitely not enough. These speakers are meant to be driven with 150-200 watts per channel, if not more.

Systems

@piker..as you can see if you look at my profile..i have the H/K2600 with the M70,s..and it was ok with the 65 watts...in stereo..in HT..5.1..i would hear clipping in HT from the M70's..I was looking too upgrade my AVR..then saw they had the H/K3490 120 watts 45 Hcc for stereo..for 259.00..so i jump on it...and the M70,s open up more..better low end clearer mids..then i ran into an ad for Emotiva was looking into adding there 3 channel amp...but went with the UPA-1,s and the M70,s really came too life..as for people saying this and that about the Monitor 70,s..yeah they are not (HighEnd) speakers.Matthew Polk has been selling this line of Monitors for a long time..and for the money that you can pick them up for now..too me there isn't a better built..sounding speaker for the money...But like you said...150...200 watts are even more will make this FlagShip Monitor shine.

Bdyllius

Thanks for passing on the knowledge guys. I have heard that the parasound amps really work well with Polk Speakers. I am gonna search around and see if i can find some used amps. I have heard mixed reviews with the xpa, and upa amps, and the D class amps have a more digital sound although they are more efficient and run cooler. So i might have to go around and try to listen to them.

Geoff4rfc

I have 70's and CS2 hooked up to an XPA-3, sounds great to me. Tons of power on tap that I haven't used yet.

Of course, I'm moving next week and will have a dedicated theater room, then we'll let the horses run.

kazaam

anyone know whats the lowest i could get away with spending on an amp for the M70s?

abhaskare

I own M70, M40, CS2, 8" ceiling and 12" sony sub. for my 7.2 setup.
The amp is Denon 3310 and I am perfectly happy with it, there is always enough power remaining, well below ref level. My average listening level is -15 to -10 db and have never pushed it beyond -8, becomes too loud.
I have gone the route of separate amp (emotiova xpa 3), did not like it and finally sold it ($150 loss). I also have an older Denon 1802 (only 80 w/ch) and it also can drive these polks comfortably.
Denon, onkyo or pioneer elite would be my recommendations. Even a denon 2311 would do a fine job. I have also heard denon 1911 play energy towers and it sounded pretty good. So really all amps nowadays will have enough power. A good 12" sub is all you need for low end bass.

piker

A solid 12" sub will get you that low-end. Also, any decent receiver will get these speakers plenty loud, but they may start to have clipping issues as the volume is turned up to higher levels. You'll also lose out on a lot of midrange.

It's not that my 808 couldn't get loud enough (it did), it just didn't have the full amount of sound I expected from the M70's. My M60's were fine on it, but the M70's needed more, as they sounded worse than the M60's until I got the XPA-5 to run them.

Bdyllius

Alot of people i see have the xpa-5. some say they like it, some say they dont. Can you Compare it to say a parasound 5250, or an anthem 5ch?

tonyb

Bdyllius wrote: »

Alot of people i see have the xpa-5. some say they like it, some say they dont. Can you Compare it to say a parasound 5250, or an anthem 5ch?

Compare an Emo to an Anthem or Parasound ?? No comparison imho anyway. Plenty of good used amps out on the market that will **** slap an Emo, especialy for music playback.

Bdyllius

My use would be primarly movie viewing and gaming. so always 5.1.

Systems

tonyb wrote: »

Compare an Emo to an Anthem or Parasound ?? No comparison imho anyway. Plenty of good used amps out on the market that will **** slap an Emo, especialy for music playback.

...Pimped out on this Advice..lol..@tonyb...i have seen some of your better post in here with some really good suggestion and advice...UPA-1 mono block amps Compare very well to what the OP was asking. Parasound Anthem Acdom and so on would be hard pressed to match in price (New).

cfrizz

All of the amps mentioned above will get the job done including an Emotiva XPA-3 or 5. Everyone has to start somewhere, and has to decide how much they want to spend to have their speakers operate to their full potential, which is what getting a separate amp will do for them.

Welcome to Club Polk Bdyllius! I always recommend a 5 channel 200wpc @ 8ohms amp & be done with this upgrade, which will serve you through all other upgrades to your system.

Do it once, do it right, sit back and enjoy it for years to come.

Good luck with your decision, please let us know what you decide on.

Systems

A nice 5 channel amp would do well in the set up you are talking about..and let the AVR handle the back two surrounds in a 7.1 set up. New or used can be pickup without spending 5K on.

Bdyllius

cfrizz- i see you have the sunfire amp. how do you like it with your set up. I have read that they give tons of juice, but sometimes the sound quality isnt as good as expected. I have narrowed my choices down to the emo xpa-5, the anthem pva 5, or the outlaw 7500. but i did see a used sunfire...

Lietuvis91

cfrizz wrote: »

Welcome to Club Polk Bdyllius! I always recommend a 5 channel 200wpc @ 8ohms amp & be done with this upgrade, which will serve you through all other upgrades to your system.

Do it once, do it right, sit back and enjoy it for years to come.

Ditto! Could not agree more. M70s respond wonderfully to 200w+/ch and as said it will make you future proof

cfrizz

Bdyllius wrote: »

cfrizz- i see you have the sunfire amp. how do you like it with your set up. I have read that they give tons of juice, but sometimes the sound quality isnt as good as expected. I have narrowed my choices down to the emo xpa-5, the anthem pva 5, or the outlaw 7500. but i did see a used sunfire...

I love my Sunfire, and the sound quality is excellent! 405wpc 5 channels and only weighs 43lbs. It powers all of my speakers to their full potential.

If you manage to snag one on Audiogon go for it.

Bdyllius

I think ive decided on going with the Marantz av7005 preamp, and an outlaw 7500 amp. They have a great deal on Outlaws website!:biggrin:

Lietuvis91

Wow... that's a lot of high dollar gear! It'll definitely out-class your speakers, if we are still talking about monitors here. You don't really need all that for monitors, but if you have the coin and plan to upgrade speakers in the future, then that will definitely handle just about anything you trow at it!

Isn't the av7005 alone nearly $1600?! and another $1600 for the 7500 amp?!