Hi fellow wammers
I would welcome your thoughts on the best option going forwards for my setup...
My current setup is ART Deco Signature 10 speakers driven by a single McIntosh MC275 Mk V using balanced inputs fed by PS Audio PerfectWave DAC Mk2 (PWD). I've ripped all my CD's to FLAC and I've hooked up my Mac Mini direct via USB to the PWD and using JRiver Media Center 20 on the Mac. This setup allows me to use my iPhone to control my music including Spotify Connect. You'll notice I have no pre-amp in my setup. The PWD has a volume control.
I spend most of my time listening to music (mainly classical and jazz). The combination of tube amp and easy to drive speakers works well. I'm sure I could get a better sound by upgrading certain parts of the system, however, I'm generally happy with the 2 channel setup at the moment and it's been unchanged for about 5 years now.
I've decided to look again at options for a multichannel setup for home theatre use. Inevitably this has led to me evaluating the amp and DAC options as well as pre-amps.
Clearly I could get an additional 3.1/5.1 channel pre/power amp with front channel passthrough direct to the MC275 (via the amp's RCA inputs) and effectively integrate the existing setup into a new AV system but I feel that the MC275 probably isn't best suited to AV due to it's relatively low power. I really don't want to get into the realms of two sets of front speakers but neither do I wish to have some kind of switch to use two amps to power a single set of speakers.
One option I could consider is to get a second MC275 and run each as mono blocks. At a nominal 150W RMS per channel this should be powerful enough.
I'd really like to have a 5.1 system for the AV setup as I really feel that the rear speakers (even if relatively cheap) really "make" the surround sound that 2.1 or 3.1 systems cannot attain.
I have a Sony BDP-S790 blu-ray player with onboard HD decoding so I don't really need an AV processor (you may feel differently) as far as I can see. I only use the Sony for video - not music.
All thoughts welcome please!
thanks
Rob
I would welcome your thoughts on the best option going forwards for my setup...
My current setup is ART Deco Signature 10 speakers driven by a single McIntosh MC275 Mk V using balanced inputs fed by PS Audio PerfectWave DAC Mk2 (PWD). I've ripped all my CD's to FLAC and I've hooked up my Mac Mini direct via USB to the PWD and using JRiver Media Center 20 on the Mac. This setup allows me to use my iPhone to control my music including Spotify Connect. You'll notice I have no pre-amp in my setup. The PWD has a volume control.
I spend most of my time listening to music (mainly classical and jazz). The combination of tube amp and easy to drive speakers works well. I'm sure I could get a better sound by upgrading certain parts of the system, however, I'm generally happy with the 2 channel setup at the moment and it's been unchanged for about 5 years now.
I've decided to look again at options for a multichannel setup for home theatre use. Inevitably this has led to me evaluating the amp and DAC options as well as pre-amps.
Clearly I could get an additional 3.1/5.1 channel pre/power amp with front channel passthrough direct to the MC275 (via the amp's RCA inputs) and effectively integrate the existing setup into a new AV system but I feel that the MC275 probably isn't best suited to AV due to it's relatively low power. I really don't want to get into the realms of two sets of front speakers but neither do I wish to have some kind of switch to use two amps to power a single set of speakers.
One option I could consider is to get a second MC275 and run each as mono blocks. At a nominal 150W RMS per channel this should be powerful enough.
I'd really like to have a 5.1 system for the AV setup as I really feel that the rear speakers (even if relatively cheap) really "make" the surround sound that 2.1 or 3.1 systems cannot attain.
I have a Sony BDP-S790 blu-ray player with onboard HD decoding so I don't really need an AV processor (you may feel differently) as far as I can see. I only use the Sony for video - not music.
All thoughts welcome please!
thanks
Rob