urgent - for magnapans, shall I buy any of these amps?

[anm]

I am getting offer of used
yamaha M45 - 25k
b&k st 202 - 30k

Are these amps good to drive my mmg? I feel the prices are too high.

 

[anm]

anyone who can give feedback on these?

 

[venkatcr]

Anm, from what little I have read of the MMGs, they need high quality amps. I am not sure the Yamaha nor the B&K will fit the bill. Look for something like the Rotel, Parasound, Creek etc.

Cheers

 

[ajay124]

anm

I agree with venkatcr. The amps you have mentioned will not make you ecstatic. Depending on the size of your room, you should look for 50-100W QUALITY power. The amps which venkat has mentioned will do the needful.

Within a 25K-50K budget, a used amp would be a better option than a new amp which sells for that price. I would rather buy a used Arcam, Cyrus, Naim, Primare than a new Marantz, Denon or Nad. If you bide your time and remain focused on buying a quality amp, you may even find a a used Bryston B60 SST or a Sim Moon i1.

A used Bryston BR60 would be a good buy for about 30K. And the B60 SST for about 40-50K. With a post 2006 Bryston B60 SST, you would get a twenty year warranty from the date of manufacture.

My search for a Bryston amp, yielded several 3B SST's and 4B SST's, but very few integrated amp. I was quoted 40K for a used, good condition Bryston B60 SST and I felt it was a good price, but the seller changed his mind after I said yes! I was quoted 55K for a demo unit of Sim Moon i1 by Boomarang.

A few weeks back a Naim 5i was being sold by a forum member at a reasonable price but now it's gone. Rather than opting for an amp which is within your budget, you should wait and search for a good used amp in the midfi bracket.

These are the amps you could look for:

http://bryston.com/pdfs/b60_spec.pdf

http://www.simaudio.com/mooni1.htm

Frequently Asked Questions - Magnepan, Inc.


Do you have the Magneplanar MMG's? Or are you planning to buy them? I have the Maggie 1.7's on my radar for my bigger system, but would not mind checking out the MMG's with my Cyrus amp, for a smaller room. Can they be auditioned in Delhi?

 

[odyssey]

Maggies go down to 2 ohms (1.8 even), at this frequency the load is 4 x worse than it is at 8 ohms. 100W power at 8 ohms is like 25 W at 2 ohms
you need far more than 100W for the maggies or you need a 100W amp that has very very good current delivery and something that can work at low impedances

cheers

 

[anm]

pls read about vintage yamaha amps. I think (by reading only) they were quite good. this one also has first 10 watts in pure class A, and is rated for 2ohms as well.

 

[anm]

@ajay - I have them already. they need some cosmetic treatment before they can be put up full time in my living room (20x30ft). they sound quiet good with my hk amp.

 

[venkatcr]

pls read about vintage yamaha amps. I think (by reading only) they were quite good. this one also has first 10 watts in pure class A, and is rated for 2ohms as well.

Whatever said and done, Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon never garnered a very high reputation in the 2 channel market. Amongst these companies the only one which did receive some applause was Marantz that gained a reputation for making good CDPs and reasonable amplifiers.

The MMGs, when powered properly will really, sing. Unfortunately, being very transparent, they will sound terrible if paired with a bad amp. You have to be extra careful with those speakers. As Sridhar said, you really need some ample power.

Cheers

 

[ajay124]

Maggies go down to 2 ohms (1.8 even), at this frequency the load is 4 x worse than it is at 8 ohms. 100W power at 8 ohms is like 25 W at 2 ohms
you need far more than 100W for the maggies or you need a 100W amp that has very very good current delivery and something that can work at low impedances

cheers

Sridhar,

My impression was that the Maggies are 'relatively' easy to drive. Folks seem to be happy driving Magneplanar 1.7 with 100WPC/ 8 ohms. Something like a Bryston 3B SST is considered to be perfect for driving the 1.7's. Your post seems to suggest that the maggies are a very tough load to drive. I am asking, because the 1.7 is one of the speakers I am considering for a future pairing with my 4B SST. I would appreciate if you can take some time out and post at length.

Also some amp suggestions for anm.

 

[Asit]

Venkat,
I beg to differ respectfully. Yamaha vintage speakers had quite a reputation, so were Denon vintage amps (POA 3000) etc. Not too sure about Onkyo. I have myself owned a Denon mid-range CDP for more than 2 decades (currently doing duty in my son's room for our second system). It is still a decent CDP even though it is such an old unit and DACs and jitter correction have come a long way in all these years. in the last 15 years or so, Denon started paying a lot of attention to multi-channel audio-video products. I have a friend who has a current entry level Denon 2-channel amp and it is no less than others at comparable price. In addition, the build quality is very good for the price and they are still all made in Japan, as far as I know.

Anant,
If I remember correctly, you have the HK 6550 amp. It should be around 20 years old. If it is properly taken care of, all it needs is a bit of quality recapping and perhaps change of a few resistors too. It is a very very good amp, and despite not too high wattage, has a lot of drive. These amps can comfortably deliver 40 amps or more instantaneously. The power supply section is very robust. One of my friends in the US had the HK6500 amp driving a pair of huge-sized maggies very beautifully. If in proper condition, your amp will beat all current amps comfortably upto 1 L or a bit more. Cyrus and Primare integrateds will simply not have the tonality and drive of this HK (I have recently compared my HK6300 with a few modern amps around 1L and my 22 year old amp was not really a loser, a fact agreed on by the SKS people where this comparison was made). You may consider a Naim if you get it within your budget. Naims are stable against a 2 Ohm load or even lower, usually. In addition, Naims are known for their PRaT. I like the Arcam sound, very clean, perhaps lacking a bit in dynamics and body, but still very nice. But I have no idea if they are good enough to drive your Maggies. I do not hear much about the current lot of HK 2-channel amps, probably they too have of late turned to AV products, I do not know.

Regards.

 

[malvai]

+ 1 to Asit.

however if you really want a new amp, there is a great Yamaha amp from their new series. i have heard it at boomerang and loved it! even has brilliant phono stage.

the amp was bought by Jaibir from this forum and i think he is now selling it.

check the for sale thread.

grab it if you can!

 

[venkatcr]

I beg to differ respectfully. Yamaha vintage speakers had quite a reputation, so were Denon vintage amps (POA 3000) etc. Not too sure about Onkyo. I have myself owned a Denon mid-range CDP for more than 2 decades (currently doing duty in my son's room for our second system).

Asit, there is no denying that these companies (including Onkyo) were very good when they started out. They did make their mark in the two channel area. But of late, with HT systems gaining momentum, they have focussed on multichannel receivers, players and such. Within the audiophile market, they may not have the 'wow' that a Arcam, Naim, Rotel, Bryston, etc., will have. It is their focus on multi channel that allowed companies such as Cambridge Audio to exist and grow.

If Anm can get a vintage amp from any of these companies, there is no harm.

Cheers

 

[himadri]

Hi
During my speaker search days I looked very closely at the magnepan mg12/ mg1.6 and heard them twice at A2V delhi. They didnt have any good amplifier to drive it ,so both the times I demoed them on a rotel receiver.The best article on maggie mmgs + amplification is here The Entry Level: October 1996.
The crux I quote:
Magnepan tells you over and over that you'll need a high quality amplifier to deal with the load these speakers represent. They're not kidding. I was glad to notice that these speakers don't seem to be especially sensitive to amplifier interaction. The technical literature suggests that the drivers in this speaker present essentially a resistive load, without all that nasty capacitance and inductance that makes amplifiers react differently. Trying out some amplifiers of similar quality that normally sound very different from each other, I found that the MMGs sounded just about the same with all of them. These are not speakers that are going to give you amplifier matching headaches to get good sound of them. This is a good thing, because if you needed an amplifier with excellent sound and several hundred watts of power, youre talking serious money. I was quite content using some standard inexpensive solid-state muscle amps, without feeling I needed something more refined to make the speakers sound good.
The rotels drove them easily and I guess so can a denon/marantz/yamaha integrated with muscle (meaning current and 4 ohms capability).I was confident my denon pma2000ivr would drive them comfortably.In fact leaving apart the need for a subwoofer, the matching for which is probably a big issue considering magnepans are very fast and transparent and also considering they are insanely priced in india ,tough to beat the maggie sound if your listening is primarily jazz/classical.
Cheers

 

[odyssey]

Sridhar,

My impression was that the Maggies are 'relatively' easy to drive. Folks seem to be happy driving Magneplanar 1.7 with 100WPC/ 8 ohms. Something like a Bryston 3B SST is considered to be perfect for driving the 1.7's. Your post seems to suggest that the maggies are a very tough load to drive. I am asking, because the 1.7 is one of the speakers I am considering for a future pairing with my 4B SST. I would appreciate if you can take some time out and post at length.

Also some amp suggestions for anm.

I am not sure how you can call them easy to drive - however, I am talking about Maggies in general - I haven't looked at the plots for the 1.7 - a quick search got me the following info from UltimateAvmag about the 3.6s

----------
The MG 3.6's sensitivity measured approximately 80dB at 2.83V/m. Its minimum impedance in the lower midrange and below was 4.1ohms at 150Hz, dropping to 3.4ohms at 10kHz; I would rate the nominal impedance at 4ohms. With respect to impedance (both magnitude and phase), the MG 3.6 should be relatively easy to drive for any amp comfortable with a 4ohms load. This benign nature is fortunate, given the 3.6's very low sensitivity. I strongly recommend a high-powered amplifier to drive the Maggies. Its 80dB/2.83V/m sensitivity will require four times the power of a speaker measuring 86dB/2.83V/m (more typical of consumer loudspeakers) to produce the same sound level.
-------

when manufacturers were 'honest' for lack of a better word, the nominal impedance was the value which was typically 25% above the lowest impedance point. For the maggies, the impedance can swing from 3 ohms (assuming 4 ohms is really nominal) to 12+ ohms. Thats equivalent to taking a car on a downwards slope and immediately going to an upslope. These loads are not easy for any amp to handle, furthermore the impedance is a complex one.

Himadri posted a link about how amps don't make much difference in sound with these speakers - I am a bit skeptical about that. The sound of these speakers is quite different from traditional sound, in that respect everyone who hears this (when not used to ES panels) ends up hearing something that is extremely large, very airy, open, etc this sound signature dominates over everything else with this speaker. As a result if one tries various amps in a store, the differences in tone/timbre can easily be overshadowed by this larger than life sound....in any case this is what i think.

Ajay, the other thing to note is that these speakers are completely dipole - these are hell of a lot harder to setup (ofcourse this has nothing to do with impedances or drive). I mention it only because you seem to be considering these as well. From what I have heard, the King Sound speakers provide much better value.

The other thing to do is to go with autoformers to effectively raise the impedance seen by the amps. The other thing to note is that Magnepan specs the sensitivity at 500 Hz, not at 1Khz like most of the other companies do

Also in our staple, the Odyssey Khartago may do quite well in terms of driving them since they are stable at 2 ohms. This is still in the 60K range.

cheers

 

[anm]

That's a good suggestion, but I do not know a good and trusted person in NCR who can do that. What would be approx cost of recapping etc? And what new caps should I settle for, that are easily available locally and are safe to use. AFAIK, caps can blast, and caps can kill.

regards

Anant,
If I remember correctly, you have the HK 6550 amp. It should be around 20 years old. If it is properly taken care of, all it needs is a bit of quality recapping and perhaps change of a few resistors too.
Regards.