Do I really need an AMP?

[edpr57]

Recently I had the urge to read about amplifiers (the one piece of equipment that I don't have but somehow felt I should). Before I get started, this is what my setup consists of:

RF-63 Fronts
RC-64 Center
RS-62 Rears
RT-12d Sub
Yamaha RX-V3800 Receiver
... the rest is irrelevant at this point.

My main concern here is that apparantly what Yamaha claims to be 140w x 7, may not actually be that, but much less. In fact I found a site where someone stipulated 110w x 2, or about 85w x 5. Now, it's a knows fact that underpowering speakers causes clippling as well as god knows what other terrifying events. At this point I am getting somewhat paranoid considering I may slowly be destroying my investment (a set of speakers that I'd drooled over for years).

The fronts are bi-amped and the sub does most of the hard work, but apparently this isn't enough. I've been reading around the forum, and it seems that the Emotiva xpa-5 would be a great fit; enough to feed each speaker 200w. Would this actulally be a sound investment? And would I even be able to hear a difference in audio quality?

[:^)] This may also be the reason why the fronts (on their own) lack much bass. Originally I thought it was the placement of the speakers, since they are not directly on any corners, but a few feet away from the back walls.

[Arky]

The fronts are bi-amped

Bi-amped or bi-wired?

Yes you will hear better quality for several reasons. You can search the forum for "separates" and read lots of thread.

btw, welcome.

[wuzzzer]

First off to address your lack of bass, your speakers are rear ported and NEED to be near a wall behind them for the ports to do their thing. The rule of thumb is to add up to the total diameter of the port(s) you have on a speaker and place the speaker that far from the rear wall. Adjust slightly from there if need be.

Even at 85 watts, your speakers should be putting out enough decibels to cause hearing damage within a short period of time.

As long as you're not hearing distortion you don't have to worry about your speakers. You won't slowly damage them over time by using an amp/receiver that's "underpowered" as long as you're not feeding them a ton of distortion.

[dtel]

With those speakers and sub, it sounds like something is not set correctly if you don't have enough bass.

[DU73]

With those speakers and sub, it sounds like something is not set correctly if you don't have enough bass.

totally agree

I am pretty confident in saying that something is wrong here for sure. IMO your yammy is plenty powerful for your speakers to at least sing.. but to get the most out of them (not just talking about loudness) a seperate amp will be needed IMHO.

Maybe your settings are wrong. First on your receiver I would recommend, if you have not already, set all you speakers to small and your sub crossover on receiver to 80hz and as for your sub set the crossover all the way to full this will let your Yammy handle the bass side of things.

I would try this and report back.

[DU73]

and of course - welcome

[edpr57]

Yes, the fronts are actually bi-amped since the receiver allows for this configuration as long as you're not doing 7.1.

[DU73]

and - what wuzzzer said [Y]

[edpr57]

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I get PLENTY of bass (from the sub). What I mean is that if I completely lower the sub's volume, there is hardly any audible bass coming from the fronts.

BTW, I'm a newbie here and I haven't the slightest idea what IMO or IMHO means... and the configuration settings that you're suggesting have always been in place [speakers set to small, receiver crossover at 80Hz, and no limit on the sub's crossover.

Perhaps I should do some further testing since during a bass test, I believe all the bass I get comes directly from the sub, and none form othe fronts (I never really bothered testing as it all sounds ok to me).

[edpr57]

I'll deffinetly try what

wuzzzer suggested and giving the port some additional "headroom" back there. At this point the speakers are about 2 feet away from the back wall.

I do seem to get a good amount of decibels going, it's just the fact that I'm not sure if there is any clipping, or anything like that going on. Distortion I wouldn't expect since none of the speakers are handling much bass, or are you referring to some other king of distortion?

[White_Hawk]

IMO- In my opinion

IMHO - In my humble opinion

[dtel]

No I think thats the kind of distortion he was talking about.

Ok if you speakers are set to crossover at 80 being set to small your not going to get alot of bass out of them , it's being sent to the sub. Thats how it should work, it takes away some of the drain on the amp and lets the speakers do the easy part. The speakers should only play above 80hz, if you want to see what the speakers can do set them to large and turn off the sub and just play in stereo to get an idea what they can do.

If your set to crossover at 80hz and you turn down your sub you should have very little bass out the mains.

If you send the bass to the sub you can not expect your main speakers to play the bass even with 10,000 watts, there not being sent the bass signal. Thats like saying I can't get my stereo to play loud when the volume is set really low. []

You can set your mains to large and have the signal sent to both the sub and the mains, that usually don't sound as good but try it out ?

I don't mean to sound like a smart @ss but think about what you saying, it's working correctly is what your saying.

Welcome to the forum [:$]

[willland]

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I get PLENTY of bass (from the sub). What I mean is that if I completely lower the sub's volume, there is hardly any audible bass coming from the fronts.

Welcome to the forum. No you don't need an amp to achieve your goal. With that said, an amp would better help you achieve your goal. I believe the amp section of your Yamaha is plenty powerfull enough to drive your whole setup with plenty of bass. I currently am using my Onkyo 705(100w) with a B&K Reference 3 channel(200w) powering the fronts and center and the Onkyo's amps driving the surrounds. I have the crossover in my sub set to off and am using the receiver's crossovers. I have the RF-63's set at 60hz and the RC-62 set at 70hz. The 63's are pulled away from front corners about 12 inches and toed in about 30 degrees. After hours of testing, these settings have yielded the most and cleanest bass from my system. Remember room acoustics play just as an important role in overrall sound as your equipment. In closing, when I have used only the Onkyo powering the fronts(set to large) and without a sub, the RF-63's have really held their own in the bass department. Clean and loud. Using the sub just helps mesh everthing together better and takes some strain off your receiver and your 63's bass drivers.

Bill

[tommyboy]

No, you don't NEED an amp. But, I just incorporated an amp into my setup last week, and WOW, what an improvement! Its a 2 ch. amp, and I'm not biamping my mains. I think without anything hooked up to the R and L channels on my receiver, the extra wattage goes to the center and surrounds. but don't quote me on that. But, the amp definitely made a vast improvement on the overall sound of my system..................

[dtel]

The fronts are bi-amped and the sub does most of the hard work, but apparently this isn't enough. I've been reading around the forum, and it seems that the Emotiva xpa-5 would be a great fit; enough to feed each speaker 200w. Would this actulally be a sound investment? And would I even be able to hear a difference in audio quality?

Yes you may hear a difference with the new amp.

" This may also be the reason why the fronts (on their own) lack much bass. "

Or it could be because they are set to small...........try setting them to 60 to get a little more bass

Or set the 2 front mains to large and cross a little above what the mains can go down to which is 31hz.

Or just buy the amp if thats what you want to do ?

.

[nezff]

I also have RF63s and a RC64. I recently purchased a Emotiva XPA-3 to run just my front stage and let the my Pioneer Elite run the RS 42s. I noticed a difference with the new amp. the sound quality was better. But on the other hand, my pioneer ran my front stage very well be itself. Klipsch speakers do not need much power at all. I enjoyed my pioneer but some of the features like the inability to set each xover point for the fronts,center,surrounds and sub seperately. It also had a couple other problems with the directv hd channels.

I am currently looking into the Onkyo 876 since it has 140 watts per channel and a ton of other perks. Honestly i would love to buy a brand new onkyo 805 but they are unavailable everywhere. The 876 is alot better than the 806 from what ive read.

I dont think you "NEED" an amp. A good receiver with a decent amount of wattage would be fine.

[edpr57]

I think I need to apologyze here. I wasn't too clear in my previous explanation.When I said that my RF-63's weren't giving much bass, I had already in fact muted the sub, set the speakers to "big", disabled the crossover function on the amp as well as the equalizer. Regardless, I did listen to you guys and tried it again this morning. The bass was there (not as deep, but it was there as much as I guess it should be). The room where the speakers are located is somewhat unusuall so that could be another reason (I know having them near the corners would yield better bass output).

I must not have noticed much bass before since I was coming off from listening with the sub on. I was never really used to the fronts alone since I never set them up until I had them all, including the sub.

I guess I can't complain. Music sounds awesome, and more so does blu-ray (I still can't get over how unbelievably clear and detailed everything sounds)[].

[edpr57]

I also have RF63s and a RC64. I recently purchased a Emotiva XPA-3 to run just my front stage and let the my Pioneer Elite run the RS 42s. I noticed a difference with the new amp.

Something I have noticed, specially when listening to the "white noise" that receiver produces during the auto-setup, is that out of all speakers, the center (RC-64) sounds much duller than the rest. You seem to have a similar setup, so I was wondering if you experienced anything similar when running all speakers from the receivers amp?

Also, this morning when I ran the auto setup with no sub, it set each speaker to "big" except the center, which it considered as "small". Since this speaker requires more power than the others (200w RMS), could this be prove that the receiver is simply not giving it enough juice?

[dtel]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound like an @ss, something didn't sound right.

That is a really nice amp I plan to order one in a couple weeks but not for Ht. I have been looking at them for a while and couldn't find anything better even for a much higher price.

I just couldn't recommend you get the amp when something appeared to be not right from the start.

[dtel]

I also have RF63s and a RC64. I recently purchased a Emotiva XPA-3 to run just my front stage and let the my Pioneer Elite run the RS 42s. I noticed a difference with the new amp.

Something I have noticed, specially when listening to the "white noise" that receiver produces during the auto-setup, is that out of all speakers, the center (RC-64) sounds much duller than the rest. You seem to have a similar setup, so I was wondering if you experienced anything similar when running all speakers from the receivers amp?

Also, this morning when I ran the auto setup with no sub, it set each speaker to "big" except the center, which it considered as "small". Since this speaker requires more power than the others (200w RMS), could this be prove that the receiver is simply not giving it enough juice?

Try taking off the center channels grill and make sure all drivers are working, I don't think that's right. That's a big center to sound duller than the rest ?