Best Amp for B&W 802D3

[LTig]

That might very well be possible. The amp will probably have a high output impedance, which is likely audible.

It is, because with typical speakers the frequency response is not flat but looks a bit like a loudness correction, leading to "fuller" sound. Nothing a little EQ or a real loudness correction couldn't fix even better.

Edit: see figures 1 and 2 at Stereophiles measurements:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/primaluna-prologue-premium-power-amplifier-measurements

 

[Ageve]

Not always the case, I hear clear difference between my Accuphase and my PrimaLuna amplifiers, the latter being a valve amp.

PrimaLuna EVO400 integrated amplifier Measurements | Stereophile.com

Sidebar 3: Measurements The PrimaLuna EVO 400 arrived without the eight EL34 output tubes installed, just the six 12AU7 small-signal tubes. Neither the EL34s nor the sockets are numbered, so I assumed that PrimaLuna's Adaptive Auto Bias system would ensure that the tubes were optimally biased...

www.stereophile.com

PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium power amplifier Measurements | Stereophile.com

Sidebar 3: Measurements I performed a full set of measurements on the PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium power amplifier, using both my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It") and my vintage Audio Precision System One.

www.stereophile.com

Black: Simulated speaker load*:

PrimaLuna EVO400:

PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium:

8 ohm tap:

4 ohm tap:

* https://www.stereophile.com/content/real-life-measurements-page-2

It will look very different with 802 D3 (most likely even worse).

802 D3 impedance:

 

[Sokel]

I would search the reviews for the three important stuff.
No load dependency down to 2-3 Ohm if possible
20Hz-20kHz FR with no roll off at the audible spectrum
No Power vs Frequency dependency

The later is a newer test Amir does but you tell by the example:




276W max power at 1kHz/4 Ohm




Only 185W max power at 40Hz/4 Ohm

Happy hunting!

 

[Hear Here]

I'm in search for a good power amplifier to power my 802D3 speakers.

I can only suggest you home demo a number of likely contenders. It's surprising how much difference there is in a selection of good quality amps, as I found when I decided to move from SETs to SS amplification. I bought or borrowed at least 10 amps, or all-in-ones in the $3-8K range. Some that measured well turned out to be drearily dull while others that may be expected to be less engaging offered a much more entertaining sound. It's essential yo match your amp with your speakers and the room they will be udsed in. I can't recommend a particular amp as my speakers couldn't be much more different than yours and probably my room too"

 

[Mort]

Yeah, don't do that.

 

[Digital_Thor]

If I remember correctly, these two amplifiers did not play well with B&W - too weak, lack of control, you could actually see the woofers "flap" more with the lack of control at the same volume.
https://lyngdorf.steinwaylyngdorf.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Lyngdorf-SDA-2175-Owners-Manual.pdf
https://www.crutchfield.com/S-bDgOLhTWa9G/p_642MA9S1/Marantz-Reference-Series-MA-9S1.html

This one - sadly discontinued - grabbed those woofers by the balls, to be frank:
https://groundsound.com/hpa2k.php
Correction - only 1200W in 4 ohms - not my previously claimed 1400.

Lower wattage amplifiers should properly be able to do the same, but these were the amplifiers we had at disposal at the time, and of course EQ would help a lot... and he tried that too (with EQ available 15 years ago).... but as a good starting point, amplifiers that just amplify the signal - no matter the load and preferred volume - works the best IMO.

Class D is definitely climbing to the top, somewhere close to class H - just see Benchmark AHB2

Talking speakers and EQ. Please notice that all B&W speakers have a pretty ragged power response, leaving anyone trying to EQ these speakers, with some compromises to live with - no free lunch there - but we like the speakers we like - for various reasons - chose your poison

 

[Wolf11Man]

Buying a different amp to get a better sound from the same speaker is like buying a faster car to spend less time in a traffic jam.
Complete nonsense if the amp you use right now is not brocken, unstable or non quality...

You are chasing a ghost and any high end dealer will be happy to help you to do this. By buying a more expensive amp from his shops shelves of course.
Once you have one of the SOTA amps of today, which even may be a 50-200$ Fosi, Aiyima, Toping or any other TPA3255 powered "cheap" thingy, preferable the 2 Ohm stable mono versions, you are done.

This is a sad truth. Sure if you own heavy, expensive, boutique amps, that will be very offending to you. That would be the result from objective listening, which sure is not your thing.
If you like the illusion that more money could buy you a better sound from your speakers, live it. You harm no one, except for your finances, push the economy and sure, looks matter, too.
Compromise: Get a good looking amp, empty it from all electrical parts and put two mono chip amps inside plus two bricks. Thats it, the best sounding, heavy amp you will ever own.

 

[Mart68]

It would seem that although the speakers are not an easy load the Fosi mono should be able to deal with them - on paper, at least.

But in the real world?

If you really want total peace of mind that the speaker is being driven optimally, get a Krell. The amplifier equivalent of nuking the site from orbit.

 

[Digital_Thor]

Hmm..
Now that I think about it, rather than trying to advise from my own biased opinions and experience Maybe we should keep it more rational and ask about your specific setup, speaker placement, listening position and how flexible you are considering measuring, changing your pre-amp for one with good EQ capabilities and actually fiddling with it all?
IMO, my best experience with low listening levels, was adding well integrated subwoofers, because it adds volume to compensate for the fletcher muncher curve, earlier mentioned.

 

[Hear Here]

Buying a different amp to get a better sound from the same speaker is like buying a faster car to spend less time in a traffic jam.
Complete nonsense if the amp you use right now is not brocken, unstable or non quality...

You are chasing a ghost and any high end dealer will be happy to help you to do this. By buying a more expensive amp from his shops shelves of course.
Once you have one of the SOTA amps of today, which even may be a 50-200$ Fosi, Aiyima, Toping or any other TPA3255 powered "cheap" thingy, preferable the 2 Ohm stable mono versions, you are done.

This is a sad truth. Sure if you own heavy, expensive, boutique amps, that will be very offending to you. That would be the result from objective listening, which sure is not your thing.
If you like the illusion that more money could buy you a better sound from your speakers, live it. You harm no one, except for your finances, push the economy and sure, looks matter, too.
Compromise: Get a good looking amp, empty it from all electrical parts and put two mono chip amps inside plus two bricks. Thats it, the best sounding, heavy amp you will ever own.

It alarms me when I read this sort of "advice" on an audio forum. The OP has high quality speakers with a 5-figure value and wants an appropriate amplifier. You suggest that he is wasting his money if he speands more than $50-200. What utter crap advice. Perhaps you are content with amps of the type you suggest powering appropriately cheap (maybe $500) speakers - then the amps won't be in a traffic jam, but with his 802's there's a clear motorway ahead! We don't know your kit because you are reluctant to include it in your Profile - but the OP deserves better than that advice.

 

[voodooless]

What utter crap advice.

Crap advice is asking people to compare amps without applying basic controls.

 

[Digital_Thor]

Crap advice is asking people to compare amps without applying basic controls.

I take that one fully on my back
Which is why I tried to push myself back on track in the last post
I also just dug deeper and found out that the last time testing one of these small class d amplifiers, was an Aiyima A7 that we tried for a tweeter in a fully active system, and here you clearly heard hum/noise from it.... Directly from the tweeter... So my bias crawled in again

 

[voodooless]

you clearly heard hum/noise from it.... Directly from the tweeter...

Well, that can happen with a multi-thousand $€ amp as well. Amps that you put directly on high-efficiency tweeters do need some care so that the noise is as minimal as possible.

 

[tineared]

The manufacturer advises an amp up to 500w @8 Ohms. I would listen to them
The minimum power I would consider is a pair of Purifi 9040BAs @ 375w

 

[Digital_Thor]

The manufacturer advises an amp up to 500w @8 Ohms. I would listen to them
The minimum power I would consider is a pair of Purifi 9040BAs @ 375w

Wattage alone won't cut it. All information so far points to this.
A well designed amplifier or high wattage is too loose a term. My amplifiers a built by someone from the PA industry - so to speak. So again, my reference is biased, since I view almost all typical HIFI amplifiers as a bit too weak and always lacking just a bit, when it comes to the ability to 'ignore' which speaker you connect.
But let's get back to the OP's potential 'challenge'.
Maybe he could measure the actual response in the listening position, giving us a hint whether there might be a much more actual acoustical issue to chase, rather than amplifiers?
He might have some+/- 10 dB somewhere between 30 and 150Hz, making amplifier chasing kinda irrelevant, as Voodooless already pointed out.

 

[voodooless]

The manufacturer advises an amp up to 500w @8 Ohms. I would listen to them
The minimum power I would consider is a pair of Purifi 9040BAs @ 375w

It says 50W to 500W. Your minimum goes right against their recommendation… and why would the OP need 375W for a 90 dB speaker at low volumes? At 375W you can reach 110+ dB plus in-room.

 

[Wolf11Man]

The OP has high quality speakers with a 5-figure value and wants an appropriate amplifier. You suggest that he is wasting his money if he speands more than $50-200.

The OP has speaker with a once 5-figure price tag. Value is something else by the way. In fact some may see this speaker familys sound quite critical. The right 50-200$ amplifier will give him a neutral base line of the sound it really has. No well designed amp will do anything else.
We have 2025, amps have come a far way. If you still think a TPA3255 chip amp, with a well working supply sounds bad, you are simply closing your eyes from reality. Maybe have a look at the amp review list of this forum, you find this "cheap junk chips" anywere near the top. Even powered by questionable power supplies they perform much better than the price tag suggests.
If you still not like the sound of your speaker with a neutral amp, it may be time to look for another speaker or an amp with a frequency response changing option. Some amp may change the response by a fraction of a dB, but for a loudness function to give more bass and sparkle at low volume, you simply need such an option. No, even most expensive amp, will change sound without a sound changing function.

The Aiyima A07 for example is 100% dead silent, any noise is a misfunction, in most cases from a bad supply or ground loop. If you only feed it through an old 90 Watt/ 24 Volt computer supply, you will not get the possible 300+300W peak output. You have to give it 48 Volt and at least 10 Amps current to make it sing. No A, AB, H or whatever amp will perform if you take away 5/6 of it's power supply. If you have 2 mono D-chip amps, each side needs a sufficient supply to give the best result possible. If you don't believe me, ask Amir about amp sound.

 

[Head_Unit]

After swapping that amp with an Accuphase A-48S I thought I heard better low end at lower volumes, could be bias and could be not the samen volume, my audio memory is very limited in time

Yeah that is a problem! We once swapped that same friend's dying ancient Yamah receiver for a newer Onkyo, we agreed the bass sounded better. But on a difference occasion we swapped a $20-on-sale Parts Express amp out after a Denon AVR-X3600H and were hard pressed to be sure we were hearing a difference (at least up to moderately loud volume, where the cheap amp would run out of power)

 

[IngMishael]

I'm in search for a good power amplifier to power my 802D3 speakers. I'm streaming music using USB to my DAC (Topping DX9) and powering some amplifiers...
Via pre-out -> Fosi V3 mono (with unexpected good results)
Via fixed-out -> Accuphase E-470 | Primaluna Prologue Premium

What I'm looking for is a power amplifier driving the speakers very well even on low volumes, ik like tight strong low and fluid midrange with some sparkle at the top but not too much
I was looking for class A amplifiers of maybe good class D (or GanFed)...

Some experiences and or recommendations?

THX in advance

KInd Regards

Because this speaker has impedance dips to roughly 3 ohms and swings in electrical phase angle, it is highly sensitive to the amplifier's output impedance.

So imo, a high-quality solid-state power amplifier with a high damping factor (at least 50, but ideally >100 into 8 ohms) should do

that takes away unneeded impedance matching variability and makes the amplifier behave like a constant voltage source, meaning the frequency response you hear is determined by the speaker's design, not the electrical interaction with the amp.

There are many amps like that

I'd recommend this one - https://boxem-audio.eu/en/stereo-am...te_color-satin_black/10-mains_voltage-90_132v

 

[Digital_Thor]

Your miles may vary, but I for example find B&W speakers very unlinear. A 3-5dB dip in the middle of our very sensitive hearing range is a huge deviation in my book.
Talking about 5 figures regarding speakers, means very little. Like amplifiers, so speakers... There's a limit where performance rarely rises with price.