Hifi Amplifier with stereo sub outs?

[admin_exported]

hi there ... hi-fi novice here, new to the board and looking for some amp advice!
I finally have the space to fire up an ancient pair of rather large hand made speakers from the 70s/80s. The bass units are about a meter tall and have Quad Raceway Drivers. The mids + highs are separate and also Quad. Currently they have an early crossover unit splitting the signal three ways. Can anyone recommend a decent integrated amplifier for about £200 - £400 that would be suitable, possibly with a stereo sub woofer output for the bass units? In fact any advice on what would be appropriate would be great! If there’s any more info I should give just let me know. Many thanks, CB.

 

[Anonymous]

most modern amps have a pre out for sub or power amps so it should be relatively easy to find one but i wont advise as i don know wich would be better for u

 

[Andrew Everard]

Please bear in mind that if you want to run the bass units seperately, using the preout sockets on a suitable amplifier, you'll need to buy a separate stereo power amplifier to power the bass units.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Andrew Everard"]

Please bear in mind that if you want to run the bass units seperately, using the preout sockets on a suitable amplifier, you'll need to buy a separate stereo power amplifier to power the bass units.

[/quote]

yes exactly! my bass units are passive and there are two of them, so a mono pre sub output is no good to me.

thanks for your replies.

 

[Anonymous]

Any reason why you can't just use Biwired cable and power both the bass and the treble from the same amplifier?

Of course, using multiple amplifiers is going to give you better sound, but that might mean buying more hifi than you can afford.

Are the bass units also fitted with a crossover? They are hand made so maybe they dont,but you could probably get away without one. I wouldn't reccomend it though, the extra high frequencies will proabbly screw up your bass response. I'd try a decent integrated amp, biwired cables and a crossover unit, if you need it.

how much do you know about these speakers? useful information would be:
Power handling
nominal impedance (which you can test by putting a 1Khz sinewave through and measuring the current drawn and the voltage, dont forget to convert to RMS voltage by dividing by 1.41)
installed crossover frequency roll-offs (only important if you need to add a crossover to the bass unit)

How much are you looking to spend?

 

[Anonymous]

lol, look slike I didn't read your post well enough😉

I would look for an audiolab amplifier on ebay or something similar. The 8000A you will get pretty cheap and yes, you could pre-out from it, but I would use biwire cable and wire to both speakers. See if you can separate the bass section of the crossover somehow, might require a bit of soldering, and attach that to the bass unit. Being hand made though, it's gotta be begging for some means to improve it in some way. The first place I would start is the crossover and probably some means of mass loading the bass cabinet. A lot might be achievable without even opening your wallet. Separating the bass and treble would be great. If you buy second hand, you could probably get a pair of power amps and pre and do proper bi-amping. Depends how worthy the speakers are of extra amplifier though so I would start with an integrated that has pre-outs (such as the 8000A) and add an 8000P for the bass units later on, if you want to give it some more oommph and make the most out of your speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for the tips! there is only one crossover for each speaker (ie one on each chanel splitting the signal into low, mid and high).

i think i will search out an amp, see how they sound and then look into improving the crossover unit. maybe further down the line go into separate pre and (multiple) power amps but my wife says she wants to be able to turn it on when i'm not there so got to keep it simple ...

cheers!

CB