Looking for hardware advice for a stereo setup

[noise]

Hey, I'm looking for suggestions on a setup: I have a pair of Klipsch Heresey speakers that I want to connect to a small receiver with a few features like: bluetooth, Apple Airplay, room correction, and playing/streaming my audio collection stored on a NAS drive. A nice to have feature would be a sub-out connection for future expansion of the system.

I am looking at a unit like the Yamaha MusicCast, but I am concerned I'll be stuck with an out of date and unsupported piece of hardware in a couple years. I started reading here about some people using a Raspberry Pi as a streamer, so I'm thinking maybe in the long-run it would be better to use a Pi with an integrated amp. Or maybe even something like a Hifiberry Amp2 and just use that without the separate amp since I don't need a lot of power, but that would require some work to get a physical volume knob.

 

[Wes]

why will the Yamaha MusicCast be out of date and unsupported?

 

[noise]

The product has been around a while and eventually products are replaced with new ones with new standards / services will eventually come around. Also, it looks like the Yamaha apps are not that highly rated.

 

[SKBubba]

Almost all of the consumer Denon Marantz Yamaha AVRs will do all the things you want to do. You can spend a little or a lot. The higher up the food chain you go you get incrementally more power, more channels, a few more features, and progressively better room correction. For Denon, the price/performance sweet spots for a somewhat better entry level setup are the AVR-X1nnn and AVR-X2nnn series. The AVR-X3nnn series is a step up in room correction, sub management, zone 2 playback, etc. but enters the getting expensive territory for just 2 channel playback. You can usually get last year's model on sale for a good discount. If you just want basic room correction, the AVR-S6nnn series may be a decent entry level option. These are all just my opinions.

 

[noise]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am looking for something smaller than an AVR. Are there any decent small class D amps with volume control? I have tried searching here, but haven't seen measurements for one. I am thinking I will experiment with a Raspberry Pi and the HiFiBerry DAC+ DSP using either the optical or RCA outputs as the audio source.

 

[Tom C]

Lots of decisions to be made.
Your Pi selection will give software volume control if you use the right player, but that has limitations. Many prefer a physical volume knob for practical and sound quality reasons.
Have you seen the reviews of the Hypex NC400 and Purifi? They give top grade performance in a power amp.
If you like to tinker and are ready for a learning curve, Pi may be good. But if you prefer a plug-and-play solution with minimal headache, you may wish to consider one of the many excellent DAC’s tested here. You could go with headphone amp + DAC as separates, or choose a combo model, depending on your needs and budget.

 

[noise]

I was looking at the Purifi setup, it looks to be $760 + $200 for the core components (no chassis or hardware). It's not clear where the best place is to buy the parts if located in the USA. It's probably way over what I need power-wise. I have read the Heresey's don't need much amp power and I just have them in a bedroom aka "man cave". I'm guessing I just need something in the range of 10's of watts max.

How would I use the headphone amp with a speaker setup?

 

[Chrispy]

Maybe the Yamaha N803? https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/hifi_components/r-n803/index.html

 

[Tom C]

I was looking at the Purifi setup, it looks to be $760 + $200 for the core components (no chassis or hardware). It's not clear where the best place is to buy the parts if located in the USA. It's probably way over what I need power-wise. I have read the Heresey's don't need much amp power and I just have them in a bedroom aka "man cave". I'm guessing I just need something in the range of 10's of watts max.

How would I use the headphone amp with a speaker setup?

Many of the headphone amps have rca connectors for input and output in the back, and a headphone jack on the front panel. So, you plug a DAC into the rear input, a power amp into the rear output, and the knob on the front controls the volume. Most have a switch built into the headphone jack so that when you plug in a headphone set, the output to to rca jacks in back is cut, and the sound will only come out of the headphones, not out of the speakers.
The JDS Labs Atom is a good example.
You may wish to consider an alternative that uses XLR cables instead of RCA, which would be expected to minimize potential hum problems. And some units combine the headphone amp with the DAC. Topping and Matrix each make a series of these at different price points.
I reread your OP, and it seems like you would like to be able to add a subwoofer down the road. There are different ways to do that. One of the more common is to use a multichannel AVR, but you don’t have to. There are a very small number of multichannel DAC’s on the market, but those don’t have the capability of decoding proprietary systems like Dolby, and there’s no built in room correction software, so their use case is more limited. But one, the DAC8 Pro from Okto Reseach, has been reviewed favorably here. It’s a bit pricey, and there is an alternative from Essence in Florida that’s less than half the cost, but I don’t think Amir has measured it. Kal Rubinson has written up a review of the unit in Stereophile. But those are both multichannel, and it sounds like right now you have two speakers.

 

[Tom C]

Hypex makes power amps that are smaller than the NC400 and Purifi, if that’s what you want, and that cost less. Bear in mind their power ratings are expressed as peak power, rather than rms or continuous output power. Your speakers are pretty sensitive. Some of the Klipsch Heritage models were measured by Stereophile and HiFi News in 2019. I don’t recall the specifics for Heresy, but some of the Klipsch do have impedance curves that go pretty low at certain frequencies. Which means better results may be had with a power amp with low output impedance, i.e., solid state and not tube. One nice thing about Hypex and others like them is that the output power actually increases as the speaker load drops to 4 or even 2 ohms.

 

[noise]

@Tom C Have any of the smaller Hypex units been reviewed here? I was hoping to find a small amp like the Topping type form-factor with really good performance.

As far as sub out, is there anything special about it? I didn't think the extra RCA output would be considered multi-channel. Here's the back side of the Yamaha. I think it hits most of the points, but I kind of want something that will last a long time and it high quality, so I am thinking a simple dedicated amp would be better in the long run instead of an appliance that relies on sketchy apps or a poor web interface that can't be replaced.

 

[Tom C]

AFAIK, the smallest of the bunch reviewed by Amir is the NC400. Under the Forum tab that is near the top of your screen, second from the left, there are master review indexes that you will see as sticky posts at the top of the list. I haven’t figured out quite how to use them yet, but that’s one way you can see what’s reviewed here. Or you can do a search for a specific product using the search function, and put amirm into the member box. That will give you the reviews.
For your goals, the Yamaha will probably be a very good option. It’s nice also when it doesn’t cost and arm and a leg, so you don’t feel so bad when it comes time to replace it. There aren’t many apps that are perfect no matter what hardware you choose. And as long as the Yamaha works right out of the box, it’ll most likely continue to work for quite some time. You don’t need support until it breaks. Software updates for anything that is working well is not a benefit, in my view. The owner manual should tell you whether or not there’s a low pass filter on the SW out jack. You may even be able to use it to adjust the crossover point, or switch the filter in and out. The SW channel needs to be summed from the left and right channels. For movies and other multichannel sources, that has been done when they mixed the soundtrack in the studio. If you are playing back a stereo track, your equipment (amp) has to create a mix of the low frequencies from the left and right channels to feed to a single SW output. Many subwoofers have a low pass filter built in, that can do this part of the job. Or if you integrate room correction, it can be done there.
I have a stereo system where I just use one subwoofer on the right, and another one on the left, without any mixing. That is simple, but can have some disadvantages if you’re having trouble with room modes. In order to correct room modes, it’s best to have at least two (or more) subwoofers that are playing the same channel. That way, some of the problems coming from one of the subwoofers is cancelled by what’s coming out of the other subwoofer. They become complimentary. My stereo room is fairly large (it’s my living room), and I don’t listen to movies, electronic music or hip hop in that room, so I don’t really have those problems, which tend to occur with super low bass.

 

[Colonel7]

Probably the first place to start is your budget? And when you say small receiver do you mean wattage or physical size bc you've mentioned yamaha and that looks like the back of a wxc-50 ($500) and another member has talked about the 803 that is traditional A/B size ($750).

 

[Colonel7]

I was hoping to find a small amp like the Topping type form-factor with really good performance.

Sorry missed this. This is the holy grail for amps right now (Topping form factor and Topping DAC-like performance and price in a D power amp) but has yet to be found. The yamaha you're looking at did pretty well in Amir's measurements but 50watts@8ohms seems like it may be underpowered for the Heresys

 

[noise]

Ok, I was wondering if maybe I just haven't come across something like the "holy grail" yet. My budget is flexible, like if it's one of the best amps we can buy for $1k like the Purifi unit, that sounds feasible, but somewhat overkill. The Yamaha WXC-50 is about half that cost, but I could see the lifetime of that product being more limited than the Yamaha. For room correction, I would still need to use another input device. I have a Yamaha AVR that's a few years old in the living room and its interface somewhat makes me cringe.

 

[Colonel7]

ASR Member JohnYang1997 is the designer of some of Topping's high performers. He says he's designing some amps to come out in 2020 (even with Covid) along the lines of your size requirements (Topping 90 chassis IIRC). I'll try and find a link to one of the threads where he mentions it.

 

[Colonel7]

See post #84 and discussion before and after.
https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ment-of-benchmark-ahb2-power-amp.10962/page-5

 

[noise]

That sounds like what I, and I guess a lot of us are looking for. Thanks for digging up that post.

 

[Adam Bernau]

Hey, I'm looking for suggestions on a setup: I have a pair of Klipsch Heresey speakers that I want to connect to a small receiver with a few features like: bluetooth, Apple Airplay, room correction, and playing/streaming my audio collection stored on a NAS drive. A nice to have feature would be a sub-out connection for future expansion of the system.

I am looking at a unit like the Yamaha MusicCast, but I am concerned I'll be stuck with an out of date and unsupported piece of hardware in a couple years. I started reading here about some people using a Raspberry Pi as a streamer, so I'm thinking maybe in the long-run it would be better to use a Pi with an integrated amp. Or maybe even something like a Hifiberry Amp2 and just use that without the separate amp since I don't need a lot of power, but that would require some work to get a physical volume knob.

Hello,
From my experience, i would highly recommend to buy separate, perhaps mid-size components, it will keep your options open for future upgrades. For limited budget, the Yamaha Musicast WXC50 as a streamer/preamplifier will work just fine. If you are willing to invest a little bit more, i would highly recommend the RME ADI2 DAC/preamp, which really has beaten a lot of much much heavier, beefier "audiophile" DACS and preamps when we tested it, perhaps connected with some higher quality streamer, like Bluesound Node 2i.
For the stereo amp i would definitelly recommend the Hypex Fusion OEM NC modules, they are practically ready made with a good power supply included, and the smallest stereo module from the Fusion FA range has 2x125 Watts/ 4 Ohm, and could be without problem compared with many, many higly praised high end products, please see the attached datasheet. Some companies are also offering this as a finished product with XLR symmetrical inputs, for a very affordable price, for example:
https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/powe...ower-amplifier-ncore-2x75w-8-ohm-p-12756.html

Regards

Ondrej

 

[noise]

Thanks for the suggestion, the RME ADI2 looks like a nice piece of hardware. I have been testing with a small amp and found the Heresy doesn't need much to make it loud, I think I read an old review mentioning using something like a 20W tube amp, so maybe a small Hypex would be a good fit, or something smaller.