LSi Help

Welcome to Club Polk.
Like F1nut said you really need an amp to drive those speakers.
Ben

Sure, if you only run one channel.

Is there anything else that gives rated power at 8 ohms and at 4 ohms, all channels driven?

Get a 5 channel
What is your budget?

Unless your AVR can handle 4 ohm loads, I would strongly suggest you do not use it to power those speakers. Any damage will be to your AVR, not the speakers.

While mostly true, the speakers can also be damaged if you try to play at max volume. The resulting distortion can fry the tweeters, and maybe even the crossovers. While it might sound contradictory, the point is you can damage both the electronics and speakers using either underpowered amps, or amps unable to handle a 4 ohm load.

butter21 wrote: »

So this maybe be a dumb question but if i get an amp that says it can push lets say 225watts at 4ohms will that hurt my speakers that only rated to 200watts

Not at all. You can only do damage by under-powering and trying to play too loud. What happens there is that the waveform signal gets clipped and essentially turned into a DC current that damages the speaker coils by overheating them.

Fr LSi speakers, the more power the better (some people will chime in about tube amps, blah blah blah but it's a good rule of thumb)

You should increase your budget a bit and try to get a 5 channel amp that has 200wpc @8ohms which will give the LSI's even more power @ 4ohms. There is no such thing as too much power when it comes to powering speakers especially hard to drive ones like the LSI's.

Having this much power will let the speakers sing to their full potential and the amp will survive through all other upgrades you make to your system.

Good bang for the buck new would be an Emotiva XPA-5. Otherwise look on Audiogon for these brands. Sunfire, Outlaw, Parasound, B&K, Nad, Rotel, Adcom.

Congratulations on your terrific system. If you power it correctly, it will keep you happy for years to come.

Here's a couple of good ones: http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampsmult&1296092107&/Parasound-Amplifier-hca2205A-t

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampsmult&1295656824&/Outlaw-Audio-755-5-X-200W-Amp

As the voice of reason - run what you have... (I would not go much louder than -15 though on a calibrated system)

If you hear distortion that shouldn't be there or your amp shuts down (goes into protect mode) either from the load or the heat buildup - get an external amp. The improvements you will hear with an external amp will be many, but depending on how critical a listener you are (and acoustically how good your room is) - may be subtle as well.

For now - enjoy what you have (within reasonable limits) and if you notice things like sloppy bass or the sound is just not as crisp as you would like - start checking into an amp.


Michael


Edit - for full disclosure - I do have a large amp on my system and do not plan on getting rid of it any time soon. I do consider them a worthwhile upgrade - but I also like getting used to a new piece of equipment before I upgrade other things around it. It not only lets my wallet recover - it also lets me get used to the sound of my system so I can better notice any changes made by the next upgrade.

xcapri79 wrote: »

With your LSi's I would recommend the bigger XPA-5 amp. My LSi's sound excellent with that amp.

I had an arguably better (scratch that, definitely better) 2 amp combo - XPA-2 and XPA-3. I replaced the both of them with the GFA-7500.

ben62670 wrote: »

EMO is like the fisher price of "high end" amps.
I had the 7500 also. A neat feature is that it has distortion lights to let you know when you are pushing things a little too hard. If they are blinking the system is ear bleeding loud.
Ben

Happy to report I've never seen those lights!

butter21 wrote: »

That i adcom is off the audiogon website.

One is for 450 but the seller has no feedback. The other is 700 but has a ton of feedback. I would send an email to the guy with alot of feedback to see if there is any wiggle room in price.