Amp suggestions for Dynaudio Focus 140

Vandam

I picked up a set of Focus 140's this afternoon. I am breaking them in with my Yamaha RX-v1700 as I write this.

I would appreciate hearing from the educated masses what 2 channel amp's would mate well with these Dynaudio's. They are 4 ohm, and from what I've read they can handle a bit of extra power.

My short list so far:
Parasound Halo A23...and thats about it.

Thoughts?

(edit..budget is finite, roughly $1500)

jm1

It too bad you didn't post this sooner. This might have been the last amp you purchased for a long time.

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstran&1273352928&/Simaudio-moon-W5-free-shipping

I use a Simaudio W-3 for my C1's.

The kids system uses a Rotel 980BX for S1.4's.

I find both of these a good match for Dynaudio.

Do a search for "Dynaudio owners thread" and go through the many pages for combinations others have used.

Vandam

Searching through the forum, I came across a thread listing the Simaudio Moon i3.3 as a potential "HT passthrough" amp. I could use this as a standalone 2 channel amp, and have it wired into my Yamaha and it'll pull double duty as L/R in my home theater set up.

Anyone done something like this with the i3.3?

Vandam

I had purchased the 140's for a 2 channel rig. I'm now looking for a stereo amp to provide better amplification over the Yammy I'm presently using.

The 2 channel 'rig' is in the same room as my home theater. I started to think as I was perusing the forum that I could have the Focus 140's pull double duty. They would be my L/R speakers in the 2Ch set up, and be part of the HT 5.1 set up as well. But, to get this to work properly wiring-wise, it looks like the stereo amp would need to have a 'passthru' setup to allow the receiver to control the volume during movies.

Does this make sense? Sorry if I am all over the place...this is very new to me.

LuSh

Hi Vandam,

I use a SimAudio i-5 with Dynaudio 52SE's with excellent results, I too use HT By-Pass through a Yamaha RXV3900. HT By-pass is an excellent feature, one I couldn't live without. For a small to medium size room I find integrateds work very well.

BottomFeeder

All await the answer of the Master, Zero.

(He didn't pay me to say this)

jaxwired

The Odyssey amps are very respected and cheap. Check them out.

Vandam

Zero wrote: »

haha BottomFeeder... crazy guy!

Vandam,

If you want to give the Danes some more juice, all you will have to do is connect an additional amp to your receiver via the front left/right PRE OUT's.

The good news is that you won't really have to pay a lot to find a good amplifier for your system. In fact, I'd say that your budget for the whole thing is too high. If you go used, there are a number of good $400 or so amplifiers that will get the job done well. If you go new, you can still bring home something for under 2 grand that will sound fantastic with those Focus 140's.

The bad news though, is that your receiver will become the bottleneck of this system. Unfortunately, most receivers, even to include those that occupy the 2k-3k range, and pretty compromised in the "pre amplification" section. This is the part of the receiver that 'processes and distributes' the signal to the amplification section of the receiver (or to external amplifiers, should you attach any). This is a pretty important part in the chain, particularly when it comes to two channel stereo. If you were rocking a more entry-level set of loudspeakers, I'd say "go for it".. but you're not. Those Danes are quite nice, and if you really want to hear what they can do, you should either A) Buy an integrated with an HT Bypass feature that you can run to the Danes, or Build two different systems, one dedicated for HT, and one dedicated for stereo.

It seems like for now, a wiser $1500 investment would be to seek out a solid integrated amplifier. If you are willing to go used, a Krell integrated (such as the 300i or the 400) would work very well with the Focus 140's. I believe both of those integrated amps also feature an HT bypass. Sim Audio would be another option worth investigating.

Thanks for all the comments guys. I have an appointment this morning to demo the Simaudio i3.3 integrated. I've done quite a bit of research and this one appears to be quite decent.

I dug up an old Sony ES receiver out of the family archives. (Not sure where this one came from...I think it was my brothers from several years back. Mom had it.) Hooked it into the preouts on the Yammy like Zero suggested above. Sounds okay. Not great, but okay.

The question now is where do I put the 'gain' control on the ES amp when I am controlling the volume via the Yamaha? I found that if I opened the gain wide up, that it sounded louder, but I had to sacrifice sound quality. Do most of you leave the gain at a given point? 12 o'clock perhaps?

Quite excited to demo the Sim Moon this morning...quality home audio baby!

Vandam

Vandam wrote: »

Quite excited to demo the Sim Moon this morning...quality home audio baby!

Brought the Simaudio i3.3 home on the weekend. Very happy with it so far.

Thanks to all for your help and input.

steveinaz

Sweet, sounds like a stellar system you're putting together...

Vandam

Just a quick update on my listening voyage.

I cannot believe what these little speakers have done for my listening enjoyment. I find myself in the man cave at almost every opportunity. I am playing around with FLAC files and am quite disgusted with the MP3's that I felt were quite good in the past. I went from a set of Polk Monitor 10's to the Dyn 140's. Quite a difference I must say. Most surprising to me was the low end that these little Dane's are capable of. Truly remarkable. The image they throw is totally enveloping once you have them set up properly. I finally found my sweet spot using the "distance from seat to speaker x.83" rule. Once in the zone, it's hard to pull myself away.

If anyone is on the fence or looking for a great monitor to listen to, do yourself a favor and check out the Dynaudio Focus 140's!

PS...once I added the Moon i3.3 amp they REALLY opened up. They can be power hungry and the i3.3 @ 200w into 4 ohms handles them beautifully. A great combo IMO!

steveinaz

I was considering the 140's very seriously when I was monitor speaker shopping, in fact they were my "plan B."

Enjoy!

Ern Dog

Nice grab. Those 140's are pretty sweet and I've heard nothing but good things about Moon products.

I owned a pair of Dynaudio Focus 220's and enjoyed them. I had them paired with Audio Zone mono blocks and it was a match in heaven. The also sounded great with a B&K amp too. I found that these were neutral speakers, which I liked. Ultimately I upgraded because when I played powerful classical music passaged, they weren't able to provide the amount of umph I was looking for.

Enjoy your new rig!