amps

[Chilly]

Lo chaps,

I'm shopping for my mother - she needs a powerful stereo amp. No bells and whistles, just good solid amplification with several input choices.

It's to drive a pair or kef Q9 speakers (800w power handling, huge dynamic range, very sensitive) in a fairly large studio. I've been googling around, but due to fucking stupid adwords destroying the searches, all I get is kelkoo and ebay links. I'm not wanting to spend more than 500 quid or so - and I may be up for a PA+pre-amp combo - as long as it sounds the business. Quality is of the upmost importance here, I'm not just after huge power outputs - that's for the tossers with "5KW PAs" in their cars.

Any ideas? - had a look at some denon and marants gear but it all looks a bit wrong.

oh - no cambridge audio.

Cheers,

Chilly

 

[Tom]

You'd be best asking on a proper hifi forum mate, you'll get a much better response.

http://forum.hifichoice.co.uk/

For £500 or so I'd stick with an integrated amp. Don't bother with the Jap stuff, you can get plenty of good British models in that budget range.

 

[old.user4556]

My dad is a huge Audiolab fan and he recommends them to all. He has their pre amp, then two seperate power amps, one for each channel.

Something like this? - http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo-1.cfm/Product_ID/2387

Very simplistic knobs, easy to use, inputs for all but it might be a bit underpowered. There is a contradiction in your requirements where you say she needs a powerful stereo amp to drive speakers capable of 800w power loads, yet further down say you're not after huge power outputs, just quality .

I'd check out Tom's forum

 

[Chilly]

yeah good poing G - my brother has suggested a powerful integrated amp so that it will be able to tame the beasts that are my mum's speakers properly. Atm they are being driven by a seriously underpowered amp and it shows, they lack proper punch and sound shit at high volume.

Cheers tom, il have a look at that forum.

 

[Tom]

The danger of using a weak amplifier to drive inefficient speakers is that you end up turning the amp up so high that the output begins to clip, which generally speaking is a rather bad thing for your average speaker cone in that it can cause irreversible damage to the driver.

 

[Chilly]

aye precisely tom - thus I need a beast

 

[Bodhi]

I got a Marantz KI-signature amp about 10 years ago for £400 and it has been awesome. It's got the grunt to tame most speakers and the quality was unrivalled at the price at the time. I know you said you didnt like the look of the Marantz stuff, but check out the KI-signature range if you can. They're all standard models tweaked within an inch of their lives, and typically sound stunning.

 

[Chilly]

yeah but 10 years ago for £400 means £1000 now probably