What amp for the RTi 12

starflight

Hi guys,

I just bought a new HT setup with RTi12's as my main fronts. Beautiful beast these. I absolutely love them but I find that my Yamaha RX-V2600 is not giving as much as these things can eat up. My receiver amp is giving 130WPC but these things can handle up to 500Watts!!!!

so I'm considering Behringer A500's, 2 of them running bridged Mono that should give 500W @ 8 Ohms. This will run me about $400 for the two no tax, free shipping. or as others have suggested, get the bigger beasty Behringer EP2500.
Not sure what you guys think of these two amps. I just want to make these puppies sounds as good as they can and I know that extra power will help. I appreciate your assistance.

Starflight
*******

Yamaha RX-V2600 Receiver
Viewsonic PJ503D DLP Projector
Fronts: Polk RTi 12
Center: Polk CSi 5
Side surrounds: Polk RTi 6
Rear surrounds: TBD
Sub: Polk PSW10
Sony PS2 Slim modded

zingo

Behringer is a "budget" pro audio company. It's not unheard of to have a good system that includes a pro amp, but the A500 is cheap for a reason. It is not a hifi amp, and you can do a lot better. I have not heard the EP2500, so make sure you demo one before you buy it. Having pro amp experience myself, here is what I have picked up:
Pro amps provide tons of power and can sometimes be had at a great price. However, they are also noisy in many ways since they are made to be in a loud environment and critical listening may not have been a goal when created. The transformer may have an audible hum, so check that out model to model. Most pro amps have fans, and they can put of quite a noise, especially at higher outputs. And some pro amps just don't sound good. They may be distorted, sloppy, or just lacking clean power. (When you're using them in a club, does that stuff really matter?)
Here is what I did:
I am running a Carver PM1201. It's 600wpc @ 4ohms so plenty of power. The transformer has a hint of a hum, but cannot be heard over the slightest volume when I am using it for my SDAs. I cleaned all the connection on the amp to clean up the sound, then installed a thermal switch so that the fans don't turn on until the amp is really warm. (They usually stay off) One of the things that impress me with Carver is that he built his pro amps similarly to his home amps. They are the same high quality circuitry and sound, but mods a little differently. If you have any questions, feel free cause there is a lot here.
PS. RTi12s are awesome and welcome to the club.

Mike Reeter

I have our 12's bi-amped with a couple of Adcom amps. 200 wpc driving the bottom end (woofers) and 125 wpc powering the upper end (mids & tweeters)

You can pick up very good used amps. from Audiogon.com at a little over half price in most cases.

Amps such as these are a far better choice than any pro amp out there IMHO.

cfrizz

Here are some options for you.

http://buy.audiogon.com/cgia/cls.pl?ampsmult&1203370332
http://buy.audiogon.com/cgia/cls.pl?ampsmult&1202864099
http://buy.audiogon.com/cgia/cls.pl?ampsmult&1204040955
http://buy.audiogon.com/cgia/cls.pl?ampsmult&1204135286

MADGSF

I agree that pro amps are not the way to go for this application. Assuming you have a 400.00 budget, only want to power the RTi-12s and are ok without a remote power on amp I found these on audiogon:
http://buy.audiogon.com/cgia/cls.pl?ampstran&1203008490
http://buy.audiogon.com/cgia/cls.pl?ampstran&1203747615

tonyb

Some good links here that are great choices for you to consider.Forget the cheapo pro amp thing,hardly ever works out well.

Welcome to the hotel....you know you can never leave now...right??

zingo

Just to clarify, I was not suggesting that pro amps would be better in this application then home amps. Both of the amps that he was discussing were pro, and so I thought I would give him the pros and cons of the kind of amps he was looking at.

starflight

Thanks all for the great suggestions. I should have clarified. My budget is about $400. This is why I was considering those Behringer amps. I should say that I spend as much time listening to music as much as I do movies.

Another amp I was considering is the ADCOM GFA-555 at 200WPC @ 8ohms. I've heard some great things about this amp and it was serious consideration but these Behringer A500's at 500W bridged in a mono config sounded like a perfect mate.

I must admit I am very happy with the sounds of the 12's right now. I don't tend to blast music all the time but I do from time to time. In my config, I have the speakers set to LARGE and bass going to both the sub and fronts.

Would these amps mentions above even at 200WPC make that much of a diff from my Yamaha's 130WPC?

cfrizz

That would be an unequivacable YES!!!

BaggedLancer

Don't listen to cfrizz, if you had said 195wpc she would have told you it wasn't enough!

starflight

all right so if I'm not going to go for the Behringers my option of choice is Adcom since I have done enough research on them. I found a GFA550 for about $400 after shipping. Thing I do like about this amp is that it has great reputation and in the future if I choose to get a second one and bridge them I would get a whopping 600WPC.. I think that is insane.

Seriously though, I have just spend a few thousand in the last month, so if I am going to fork out another $400 more, I really want there to be a noticeable difference. From all the I have read, it sure sounds like these 12's will gain from the amp.

come on gang,, help me justify the purchase and seal the deal.

cfrizz

Go watch your football game!:rolleyes::p:D

BaggedLancer wrote: »

Don't listen to cfrizz, if you had said 195wpc she would have told you it wasn't enough!

BaggedLancer

cfrizz wrote: »

Go watch your football game!:rolleyes::p:D

I am!

195wpc is enough.

Sherardp

D-Sonic Magnum 1000S, 525watts x2 @8ohms, 1000 watts x2 @4ohms. Cant go wrong there.

www.d-sonic.net

starflight

Sherardp wrote: »

D-Sonic Magnum 1000S, 525watts x2 @8ohms, 1000 watts x2 @4ohms. Cant go wrong there.

www.d-sonic.net

Unfortunately I said my budget was $400, not $1400. Looks really sweet though.

starflight

anonymouse wrote: »

Did you mean the GFA5500?

oops, I mean the GFA-555. It's an older one.

starflight

Well, so the saga of my search for an amp ends, for now. I "accidently" clicked on the Buy It now button instead of the X to close the window. The model I just bought is the ADCOM GFA-555 and I can't wait to receive it. Thank you all for your suggestions. I can't wait to receive this unit and plug it in. I will be sure to follow up and give a review of it's match with the RTi 12's.

Although, I'm a numbers kind of guy and feel the urge to see how they will perform in a 2 channel mode on the RTi12's and then bridging it and giving 600W mono to one of them. LOL

Oh it's like waiting for Christmas morning all over again. Oh joy!

Mike Reeter

Along with a new amp. comes the need for some "quality" interconnects and speaker cable.

These are also components that will contribute to the final sound,and are the most overlooked.

Let us know your thoughts when the Adcom is in the house.

george daniel

Mike Reeter wrote: »

Along with a new amp. comes the need for some "quality" interconnects and speaker cable.

These are also components that will contribute to the final sound,and are the most overlooked.

Let us know your thoughts when the Adcom is in the house.

yep and yep,,having owned a system similar to yours,,you might want to give some MIT T-2 (grey) interconnects and speaker cables a try.They seemed to tame the "brightness" that I felt the adcom 555 had.But, like Mike said,,components,,,Source cannot be overemphasized,just ask some of the long time members.Good luck,enjoy,and most of all have fun,or vice-versa

tonyb

The Adcom will serve you well,good choice.But don't get caught up in numbers and bridging one channel.This will most likely empty your wallet with very little improvement and possibly damage your speaks if you have no self control over the volume dial.As others have said,get yourself some decent cables and I/C's,they will make a difference.
Good luck and let us know what you think.Make sure you have some cables on hand to hook it up when you get it.

starflight

Thanks for the additional suggestions about the interconnects. I have already wired all my speakers with 12 gauge speaker cables from KnuKonceptz. Also I have purchased banana plugs from them as well. Every speaker is connect to the back of the Yamaha. The fronts and center also have them as well. The surrounds are bare wire but I think they sound fine for now.

I do noticed that the Yamaha and Polks sounds bit bright but I have the bass dialed to 6+ db and the treble set to -3 db. Sounds good to me. I haven't had the chance to take pics yet, but I intend to once my Adcom and Theater Director surge protector arrive. I'm also waiting for the center speaker stand to arrive. Right now the center is on top of the box it came in....

Just not ready for the camera yet

cfrizz

You will need interconnects to connect your amp to the receivers preouts.

tonyb

Just for giggles...where do you have the crossover set in your receiver?

starflight

cfrizz wrote: »

You will need interconnects to connect your amp to the receivers preouts.

any suggestions on good bang for the buck interconnects?

starflight

tonyb wrote: »

Just for giggles...where do you have the crossover set in your receiver?

Good question. I let YPAO do all of the calibration and work. Looking at my setup in the GUI, I see that all the speakers are set to Large, front center and surrounds. Bass Cross Over at 80HZ (THX). Hope this answers your question.

tonyb

Sometimes when you auto calibrate,you still have to fine tune alittle here and there.To me,80 is too high for the 12's.Try lowering it to around 65 and see if it sounds any better.If not,you can always put it back to 80.Also try setting the 6's in the rear to small.Enjoy the toys.

starflight

tonyb wrote: »

Sometimes when you auto calibrate,you still have to fine tune alittle here and there.To me,80 is too high for the 12's.Try lowering it to around 65 and see if it sounds any better.If not,you can always put it back to 80.Also try setting the 6's in the rear to small.Enjoy the toys.

Thanks. I think that when I let it calibrate, YPAO actually set this to 60 but I manually changed it back to 80 when I was watching a THX movie. I don't have too much knowledge of the cross over stuff yet, but I have set the bass cross over back to 60. I guess this would affect all the other channels and not just the RTi12's right?

I just experimented a little with setting the RTi6's from large to small, but I think I like the sounds of them set to large more but thanks for the suggestion!

Mike Reeter

starflight wrote: »

any suggestions on good bang for the buck interconnects?

Solid cables at an affordable price

http://signalcable.com/index.html

MADGSF

As far as the interconnects go all the above are good suggestions. I ended up with Audiquest Sidwinder which helped tame the brightness of my RTi-10s.

cfrizz

www.bluejeanscable.com

starflight

Mike Reeter wrote: »

Solid cables at an affordable price

http://signalcable.com/index.html

DAMN... those ain't cheap interconnects... Is it really necessary to spend close to $40 for a pair of interconnects to an amp?