Nezil
Active Member
With Black Friday sales taking place this week, I've decided I'd like to upgrade my main listening setup.
I recently built a pair of 'Helios TexTreme' speakers, and these replaced the Klipsch front channels that I'd been using previously and they already sound much much better, and have significantly improved wife acceptance factor. They are however, not especially sensitive, and therefore require a decent amount of power to drive.
My home theater setup is 7.1.4, based around the Denon AVR-X4800H, and I'm running a Fosi ZA3 to power two surround rear channels because the AVR only has 9 channels of amplification built in. I cannot use the ZA3 to power the front channels because I'm actually using a wireless link to the other side of the room for those channels. I may consider cutting drywall again to pull more speaker cables at some point, but not in the short term.
So the plan is to disable the front channel amplifiers in the AVR, and use the AVR pre-outs to another amplifier to drive the front channels.
I may be one of the few people that think the multiple inputs on the B200 is actually a good thing, because I can have a dedicated 2ch setup connected XLR from a DAC which has its own volume control with remote, and for home theater, I'll be using the AVR which also has a volume control with remote. Switching to 2ch mode with a physical button on the B200s would not be frustrating to me.
I really like the idea of getting a pair of B200s, but the inputs are XLR only, and my AVR only has RCA SE pre-outs. I've been running the numbers, and reading up on the capabilities of the X4800H and the B200s in low and high gain, and I think there won't be a problem here. I've heard that when you disable the amplifiers for a pair of channels on the X4800H, you end up with a 2.1v RMS pre-out, rather than the 1.2v pre-out if the amplifiers aren't disabled. This seems strange, and I've yet to take any measurements of the AVR, and I do plan to do that, but if so, this should mean that I could run the B200s in high gain and still get very close to full power output using a passive RCA -> XLR cable (based on @amirm's review stating that 2.2v was needed to reach peak on high gain).
Does this sound reasonable?
I recently built a pair of 'Helios TexTreme' speakers, and these replaced the Klipsch front channels that I'd been using previously and they already sound much much better, and have significantly improved wife acceptance factor. They are however, not especially sensitive, and therefore require a decent amount of power to drive.
My home theater setup is 7.1.4, based around the Denon AVR-X4800H, and I'm running a Fosi ZA3 to power two surround rear channels because the AVR only has 9 channels of amplification built in. I cannot use the ZA3 to power the front channels because I'm actually using a wireless link to the other side of the room for those channels. I may consider cutting drywall again to pull more speaker cables at some point, but not in the short term.
So the plan is to disable the front channel amplifiers in the AVR, and use the AVR pre-outs to another amplifier to drive the front channels.
I may be one of the few people that think the multiple inputs on the B200 is actually a good thing, because I can have a dedicated 2ch setup connected XLR from a DAC which has its own volume control with remote, and for home theater, I'll be using the AVR which also has a volume control with remote. Switching to 2ch mode with a physical button on the B200s would not be frustrating to me.
I really like the idea of getting a pair of B200s, but the inputs are XLR only, and my AVR only has RCA SE pre-outs. I've been running the numbers, and reading up on the capabilities of the X4800H and the B200s in low and high gain, and I think there won't be a problem here. I've heard that when you disable the amplifiers for a pair of channels on the X4800H, you end up with a 2.1v RMS pre-out, rather than the 1.2v pre-out if the amplifiers aren't disabled. This seems strange, and I've yet to take any measurements of the AVR, and I do plan to do that, but if so, this should mean that I could run the B200s in high gain and still get very close to full power output using a passive RCA -> XLR cable (based on @amirm's review stating that 2.2v was needed to reach peak on high gain).
Does this sound reasonable?
