Equipment Recommendations - The Home For New System and Upgrade Advice

Joe Mac said:
No the arcam is acting as a preamp for the jbls. It’s setting the volume and sending the infornation to the relevant channels. It’s acting as the pre and the power amp for the remaining HT channels. The new amp will be acting as the power amp for the jbls in every instance.
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This.... could be a problem. They're both Class A/B so I guess that's better but... Hmmm
 
SnowmaNick said:
I had 2x20a 120v circuits and a 30a 240v circuit added to my breaker box and new lines run to my home theater when I was building it. I think it was about $600 about 6.5 years ago. Pretty cost effective. You may want to look into it.
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I think they would have to dismantle most of my ceiling to do that. Breaker at back of basement, listening room exact opposite end of house one floor up. Honestly this might be the best reason to nix the sub. That thing draws anywhere from 800 to 1600 watts on its own. But with that being said even during loud movies it's never tripped the breaker and that should put it well over what that circuit can handle so I suppose that's good.

Although if I can just upgrade the panel and not run new lines then obviously that's doable.
 
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Mather said:
I think they would have to dismantle most of my ceiling to do that. Breaker at back of basement, listening room exact opposite end of house one floor up. Honestly this might be the best reason to nix the sub. That thing draws anywhere from 800 to 1600 watts on its own. But with that being said even during loud movies it's never tripped the breaker and that should put it well over what that circuit can handle so I suppose that's good.

Although if I can just upgrade the panel and not run new lines then obviously that's doable.
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Is the sub class D? It may not draw as much peak current, if so.
 
Angsty said:
Is the sub class D? It may not draw as much peak current, if so.
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It is Class D yes, so that makes sense..TBH it can't be drawing 1600 or it alone would have popped the breaker. But honestly this is probably the perfect reason to finally remove it from the system, so I think that's what I'm going to do. And I'll stop bugging everyone with questions now.
 
Mather said:
It is Class D yes, so that makes sense..TBH it can't be drawing 1600 or it alone would have popped the breaker. But honestly this is probably the perfect reason to finally remove it from the system, so I think that's what I'm going to do. And I'll stop bugging everyone with questions now.
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Incredulous.
 
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Mather said:
It is Class D yes, so that makes sense..TBH it can't be drawing 1600 or it alone would have popped the breaker. But honestly this is probably the perfect reason to finally remove it from the system, so I think that's what I'm going to do. And I'll stop bugging everyone with questions now.
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If you stop with the questions I'll have to go find something else to read and that sounds like work.
 
Mather said:
It is Class D yes, so that makes sense..TBH it can't be drawing 1600 or it alone would have popped the breaker.
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Class D with a switching power supply can deliver high power without super high current draw because of high efficiency in converting voltages. It’s almost like magic, but the price typically comes elsewhere in the design.
 
On that note, I did a test of my subwoofer with the usual 60hz crossover playing Fiona Apple "Sleep to Dream" due to its killer sub bass notes, and then disabled the sub and went full band to the L100s. Sub good down to 29 HZ, L100s only down to 40 HZ.

I really hoped I couldn't hear a difference.

Friends.... yeah. Big difference. That low chest rattling sub bass isn't there without the sub. It's subtle, but it really fills out the ultra low frequencies. A lot of tracks don't have those frequencies so that won't affect a lot of tunes but... the others.

Now a better amp will likely help the L100s in terms of lower bass clarity but nothing is going to make them extend to lower frequencies. So at this point I think I may have to at least hang on to the sub until after the amp just to see if the difference is as stark. But ugh, that means can't move the speakers out off the walls. PLAYING WITH SOUND IS FUN
 
Mather said:
On that note, I did a test of my subwoofer with the usual 60hz crossover playing Fiona Apple "Sleep to Dream" due to its killer sub bass notes, and then disabled the sub and went full band to the L100s. Sub good down to 29 HZ, L100s only down to 40 HZ.

I really hoped I couldn't hear a difference.

Friends.... yeah. Big difference. That low chest rattling sub bass isn't there without the sub. It's subtle, but it really fills out the ultra low frequencies. A lot of tracks don't have those frequencies so that won't affect a lot of tunes but... the others.

Now a better amp will likely help the L100s in terms of lower bass clarity but nothing is going to make them extend to lower frequencies. So at this point I think I may have to at least hang on to the sub until after the amp just to see if the difference is as stark. But ugh, that means can't move the speakers out off the walls. PLAYING WITH SOUND IS FUN
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I mean have you played with sub placement? Are you able to move it and get the speakers off the wall?
 
What I find interesting about the Arcam is it has 3 settings, DIRAC on. DIRAC off and PURE DIRECT which disables all digital circuitry. DIRAC on sounds very good, it's all calibrated with mics etc. DIRAC off still sounds very good but a bit muddier and more unfocused, but still, it's good. And then PURE DIRECT sounds like absolute hell. Like just awful. I'm so curious what the "digital circuitry" in the AVR is doing to make it sound so much better with DIRAC off than Pure Direct, if its not actually doing the room correction, which it isn't in the case of DIRAC off, then what the heck is it doing?
 
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Mather said:
What I find interesting about the Arcam is it has 3 settings, DIRAC on. DIRAC off and PURE DIRECT which disables all digital circuitry. DIRAC on sounds very good, it's all calibrated with mics etc. DIRAC off still sounds very good but a bit muddier and more unfocused, but still, it's good. And then PURE DIRECT sounds like absolute hell. Like just awful. I'm so curious what the "digital circuitry" in the AVR is doing to make it sound so much better with DIRAC off than Pure Direct, if its not actually doing the room correction, which it isn't in the case of DIRAC off, then what the heck is it doing?
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Pure Direct turns off bass management. Your sub, the high pass filter on your mains, etc. Also it ignores any distance settings, which work like a balance knob.
 
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