acurus amps as good as rotel 1095????

[pietsch288]

I was thinking about buying a 250w X 2 acurus amp for my mains and a 200w X 3 for my center and rears. WOULD THESE AMPS SOUND AS GOOD AS THE 1095.......close.......any comparison. Or should I just wait for a 1095. thanks rich

PS my goal is a warm amplifier for my rf7's---rc-7----rf-5's. on a beer budget

[nova]

Personally I really like the Acurus amps,...dunno how they compare to Rotel though, never had or heard any Rotel stuff.

[superchad]

Neither of these 2 amps a going to be warm in sound and I doubt any budget amp will give you that sound, sorry to say it but its true.

[pietsch288]

Well assuming your correct (which you are) than which amp will be exactly like my denon (I reallly am pretty happy with it) but with way more bootie behind it?? Maybe I should by 3ea 250w acurus.....that should be more than enough power with very simular sound????? Or is the rotel enough power with a closer sound to the denon???

[Sonnie]

I think they both are going to be very neutral and I cannot begin to imagine why you would need anymore power with those Klipsch speakers. I would suspect in an A/B comparison you nor I would notice any difference at all with any three of these you have mentioned. More power does not necessarily mean better sound, unless you were trying to push some difficult load with insufficient power... which you are far from doing.

I would suggest keeping what you have if you like the sound and spend the money on something else.

Unless of course you just want something new... ... then flip a coin.

[pietsch288]

hey sonnie, so what are a couple different less expensive "tube amps" or warm amps that I could use just for my mains. My biggest problem at this point is probably dynamic range (gets a little out of hand during action sceens ect). I know that I could crank up the center channel but then it gets harder to hear all the sonic detail (and seem to get a little center loaded) that puts you right in the movie. So I gues I'm thinking if I could "warm up" my mains so the are "less annoying" everything would be better. Or maybe it would be better to recommend 3 mono amps so at least my front sound stage would be the exact same. thanks rich

[Sonnie]

Check this out ... specifically #2.

I know absolutely nothing about tube amps... other than I have always heard they introduce distortion into the signal... and/or color the sound.

If you are looking for that softer high-end, you could equalize it out. If you find an amp that causes that warmer sound, it is doing something to the response to cause it to sound that way. I could have swore I was hearing a warmer sound from a Yamaha receiver I tried one time, but after further consideration, it ended up being the speakers I changed out that made the sound warmer... the speakers were more laid back in the top in. Response measurements showed the top-end response sucked out heavy... and it sounded really good to me.

[lcaillo]

The preference for tube amps is generally attributed to the tendency of tubes to be higher in even order harmonic distortion (more typical of musical instruments and voices), where transistor amps will generally have relatively more odd order harmonic distortion. The problem is that you cannot get the dynamic range and bandwidth from a tube amp at as low a cost, and transistor amps have become much better over the years with much lower overall distortion. The bottom line is that the gain x bandwidth per distortion and price ratios for transistors are far more appealling for most people than the purported advantage in sound quality.

[superchad]

Go tube pre amp and keep SS amp, best of both worlds.