No one really needs an amp anyway

jflail2

Saw some rather interesting feedback in another forum I frequent somewhat regularly, and wanted to see what the Polk pros thought here. A discussion was going on about 7.1 versus 5.1, pluses and minuses, if a guy's room was big enough to accommodate a 7.1 set up, etc.

So at one point, as people are discussing how well his receiver handles 7.1, etc, I politely mention that he could consider adding a relatively inexpensive 2 ch amp (if he had preamp outs) to take care of the workload for his fronts.

I was immediately told the following (from a self-proclaimed expert):

(And this was in reference to some 8 ohm speakers.)

1.) An amp is worthless unless you're pushing your speakers to very high volumes. At normal listening levels, an amp would have absolutely no impact on the sound quality. So amps are only helpful if you're pushing your receiver too hard.

2.) Running RCA's from receiver to amp actually results in more noise being picked up than if you just relied on the receiver.

3.) Improving any other part of your system (speakers, room treatments etc) would provide a higher yield than adding an amp.

4.) An external amp that is double the power of your receiver would only generate about 3 decibels of "head room", which isn't worth it.

So I'm curious what the gurus here have to say. I'm happy with my system, so I'm not personally concerned. Just more thinking about other folks absorbing what appears to be his misinformation.

nooshinjohn

I think it would be nice to know where that load of crap has been dropped, so we can avoid stepping in it later.

An amp made the biggest single noticeable improvement in my enjoyment of this hobby.

EndersShadow

In regards to #4 here is what I would have replied back with...

Please give me the name of a reciever whose manufacture rates their AVR with all channels driven. When most AVR's are driven w 7 channels you drop from 135 wpc to potentially 30. In which case a amp with 100 wpc all channels driven provides both the double wattage required, but more importantly has a Powersupply big enough to handle the speakers all grabbing for power at the same time.

Inspector 24

nooshinjohn wrote: »

I think it would be nice to know where that load of crap has been dropped, so we can avoid stepping in it later.

An amp made the biggest single noticeable improvement in my enjoyment of this hobby.

Pretty much this times eleventy.

F1nut

He has NO idea what he's talking about, none.

Jstas

1.) An amp is worthless unless you're pushing your speakers to very high volumes. At normal listening levels, an amp would have absolutely no impact on the sound quality. So amps are only helpful if you're pushing your receiver too hard.

- Not true. Dynamic headroom is necessary because even at moderate listening levels, there are extremes in the material being reproduced that require a considerable amount of extra power to play at an audible level in regards to the rest of the program material. That's not just for low end either. Tweeters can draw an impressive amount of power as well. Especially when voice coils and the motor structure heat up and change the impedance levels.


2.) Running RCA's from receiver to amp actually results in more noise being picked up than if you just relied on the receiver.

- While this may be true in, say, a car...a decent set of signal cables will not introduce noise into a system unless you do something like wrap them around an EM field producing item like, the power lines that feed your AC compressor? The line level signals are typically not affected by the 60 Hz, 120V cycle in a house because all of your line conditioners and even your AC to DC transformer circuits do a pretty good job of filtering that out already. So if you have noise, you have a ground issue and it may not even be in your audio equipment.


3.) Improving any other part of your system (speakers, room treatments etc) would provide a higher yield than adding an amp.

- Maybe, depends on the rest of your audio equipment.


4.) An external amp that is double the power of your receiver would only generate about 3 decibels of "head room", which isn't worth it.

- That's a load of crap. headroom may be able to be measured in decibels but it's all about amperage draw and output wattage. You amps run DC circuits on the output side of things It's going to matter how much amperage and voltage that DC circuit supports. If you only have one DC circuit supporting 5 channels, that's a big demand and if one set of channels is drawing more than the other sets, the other sets suffer. You under drive half your speakers and the speakers that are drawing more are likely hard clipping and will eventually blow from the fatigue. If you have separate amps and discrete circuits, that is much less likely to happen because then you aren't over-drawing your channels and causing other channels to suffer. It certainly does improve overhead. Overall SPL won't be that significant but if all you want is louder, get a PA system 'cause you've missed the point of "high fidelity".

Erik Tracy

I can think of several forums that you would see the mindless mantra the OP encountered.

I don't visit them anymore.....they are silly places.

nooshinjohn

Erik Tracy wrote: »

I can think of several forums that you would see the mindless mantra the OP encountered.

I don't visit them anymore.....they are silly places.

I don't go to them either. They were funny for a laugh or two, but the content on Youtube is much better.

jflail2

Droppin knowledge bombs. I think you guys know more about audio than I do my covered industry.

Thanks for the clarity gents. Always nice to hear the truth from people who are actually in the know. I'm going to try and save for a good 200x5 amp for my living room, so it's nice to get a refresher on why I'd want to do so.

And I won't go throwing forum names out there, but a lot of these guys are a **** in the wind compared to you folks in regards to knowledge....

soundfreak1

"A little bit of knowledge is a dangerious thing!" No knowledge is just frightning!

westmassguy

My unmodified 2As shutdown my Not so shabby Pioneer within seconds. Was running 5.1 at the time too. My unaltered CRS+s did the same thing, and they were 6ohm rated at the time. I guess that genius doesn't understand what a shared power supply is. I learned the hard way, and thanks to members here like Jesse and others, I became educated very quickly.

sucks2beme

There's a sub forum at head-fi called sound science.
They believe all amps sound the same. If they sound different,
one MUST be broken. How's that for "sound science"?

madmax

#5 has some merit but the rest shows he is obviously misinformed.

cnh

One thing we know for sure is that tube amps keep you WARM in the Winter months so if there's snow outside you definitely need some tubes GLOWING inside! And that's a no brainer! lol

cnh

oldmodman

Was he a manager at Circuit City by any chance?

jeremymarcinko

I can agree sq is not all about watts. But about quality of amplification. With multi-channel surround you need some power, however.