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New member Username: RobgnycPost Number: 1 Registered: Nov-06 | I recently got some Swan 4.1's. I like the sound generally but I feel like something is missing with my admittedly low end Onkyo TX-8211 (50 watts/per channel). The Swans are pretty inefficient speakers and my room is fairly big with high ceilings. Orginally I was going to just upgrade to a refurbrished Onkyo 8511 with double the power. However as I started poking around I came up with some other alternatives: 1) Harmon Kardon 3480 2) Yamaha RX 797 3) Outlaw 2150 4) Rotel RX-1052 My main requirement is power for 4 ohm speakers and a phono section. I don't really care about radio but I didn't see too many integrated amps that fit the bill so I looked mainly at recievers. NAD's integrated amps don't have phono and I'm not crazy about the looks. I don't need any sort of home theater stuff or a sub woofer. It's purely a music system. The ability to drive a second set of efficient bookshelf speakers would be nice but non essential. I would like to keep it to a single unit (no seperates, nothing that requires a pre-amp for phono) but otherwise I'm open to suggestions. My question is basically are the Outlaw or the Rotel worth roughly 2x or 3x the price of something like the Harmon Kardon? The HK seems like it would be pretty solid and cover my power needs, just wondering what else the higher end stuff offers. At about $250 the HK is pretty tempting. |
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Gold Member Username: Stu_pittIrvington, New York USA Post Number: 1518 Registered: May-05 | I'd scratch Onkyo and Yamaha off the list. They aren't very good at delivering the power they claim, especially when it comes to lower impedence speakers. I haven't heard the Outlaw unit, but many people have raved about it. It's definitely worth looking into. I've heard the Rotel unit and it's very good. Rotel makes an integrated amp with a phono input (RA 1062) that IMO sounds better than the receiver. The Marantz SR4021 stereo receiver and their integrated amps have phono inputs. On the website, you have to do a little digging to see it listed. I haven't heard the integrated amp (it's new), but the previous integrated sounded somewhat better than the receiver. http://us.marantz.com/Products/425.asp Rega integrated amps also have phono inputs. To my ears, the Brio sounds better than all of the ones I've heard and listed. The H/K is very tempting at it's price and may be able to power your speakers sufficiently, but I think most of the others sound better. Eliminating the Outlaw from this discussion soley because I haven't heard it (I'm not suggesting that you don't look deeper into it), for the money I'd go with the Rega Brio 3 (about $600) without hesitation. But then again, I haven't heard it with your speakers, room, or ears. In a few minutes, I'm going to respond to your post in the phono area. |
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New member Username: RobgnycPost Number: 3 Registered: Nov-06 | Thank you Stu for taking the time to respond to both my posts. |