Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater A question for the sub owners in the house...

I ran the M80s on my Denon 1804 for several months till I couldn't resist the 3808 and its features any longer. Denons as far as I can tell, are very stable, rock solid receivers. I even ran my low end 1804 with 2 M22 and a Vp150 all paralleled for several hours with about 85db - no problems what so ever. The 4802 on it's own is more than capable of running the M80s, save your money up till you can get an even bigger seperate amp. The 4802 should be upwards of 180W into 4 ohms, even more than your seperate. To really hear a difference you need to be looking at 250W or more seperate amps.

Well NOW YOU TELL ME!!!

Ha ha ha...

Ok well I guess I'll have to take you guys word on that, but personally I guess I would just feel more comfortable knowing that I'm pushing a 4 ohm speaker with a power supply that is rated at 4 ohms (the PMA-2000 is a 2 channel reciever, and is rated to drive 4 ohms) to match... that's just me though, I'm strange that way.

I guess part of it also comes from a review on the 4802 that I read where the reviewer described the Denon as an exceptional pre-amp, but the power supply was middle of the road. In his review he pretty much made the case that true audiophile systems are comprised of separates & that there basically aren't any recievers that deliver true audiophile quality sound from their power supplies. I will say that my current set-up sounds strained when turned up to maximum levels while listening to music, but I attribute most of that to the Cerwin Vega towers being entry level speakers and not high-end.

But I guess I took that reviewers philosophy to heart and have craved a separate amp to push my mains ever since. And the fact that I am now buying a system that calls for a 4 ohm rated amp seemed like the best excuse so far to do so! Tee he he...

But the extra channel won't be wasted, I have a pair of speakers out on the deck that I can run into the 4802 and listen to my music while I'm outside grilling now.... SUPER SWEET!!!!

Oh but I am glad to hear that the Denon is capable to run 4 ohms. I was feeling somewhat disheartened thinking that it wasn't as flexible as some of the other brands out there. When I was shopping for my reciever it was a toss-up between the Denon and a Yamaha. And after 4 years with the 4802 I'm increadibly happy with it as a surround reciever. With the new speakers I'm hoping to fall in love with it all over again & appreciate it musical abilities more now that it will have more compitent speakers to compliment it.

Some Yamahas are known to shut down driving the M80s, so you made a good choice.

I have heard the same thing about certain Onkyo receivers with the M80's.

Yup, a few have reported their Onkyo's couldn't handle the M80s either.

Well I guess that makes me a good guesser then as I had no experience with Denon what-so-ever before I purchased the 4802. My previous receiver was a VERY cheap Sony (you know, the kind of receivers that came in one of those $500 dollar stacks comprised of a receiver, a dual tape deck, a cd player and two speakers... yeah that was my first foray into Hi-fi). After hooking it up to my 36 inch Toshiba and purchasing my first DVD player I was hooked on the concept of Home Theater... but didn't have any money to purchase anything better. So after a few years at my job, and a few raises later, I FINALLY was ready to make an attempt at putting a more serious Home Theater System together.

Initially I was planning on upgrading to a better Sony unit. My initial spending limit was $1000 dollars. But as I started to investigate pricing, and started doing serious comparisons with high-end receivers, Sony quickly faded into the background and Yamaha, Pioneer and Denon started to stand out. Then my price limit started to give me grief... the more I read about the higher end features, the less and less desirable the $1000 and under crowd became to me. So after much debate I found an AVR-4802 at the rock bottom price of just $1700 dollars (this was about 4 years ago mind you), and I just couldn't pass it up with all the features it had compared to anything else in that price range.

In order to pay the extra money for the receiver I had to buy some very modest towers. I bought a pair of $650 dollar Cerwin Vega's, and a decent Cerwin Vega center. The Cambridge Soundwork surrounds were very nice though, and the down firing 220 watt Cerwin Vega sub placed directly behind the couch also did a fairly nice job for the money. All of that coupled with the (at the time) top of the line Toshiba 65 inch projection HDTV (LCD wasn't on the map yet, and only Bill Gates could afford the Plasma's at that time), and I had a grand total of around $7000 wrapped up in my movie room. It was very amaturish at best, but the kids still loved it, as did my football buddies.

But it's been a few years, and my budget has grown even more now. So what on earth else would I do... but go out and upgrade my Home Theater System again, right? Naturally, it's man law after all.

So knowing that my speakers were my weak-link, that is where I began. And having narrowed it down to two Canadian (it's purely coincidental that I too am Canadian I assure you) brands, Paradigm and Axiom, I came to the conclusion that my swollen budget is still shy of the total cost of a 'Top of the Line' Paradigm surround system. And while I'm sure their line of speakers that are comparable to the Axiom Epic 80 systems probably sound beautiful, I guess I'd rather have a company's flagship product over another company's middle of the road product... like I said, I'm strange sometimes.

So I'm hoping this guess will go as well as my Denon guess went, as I also have absolutely no experience with Axiom speakers what-so-ever before this purchase. The 4802 is sticking around as it is still a worthy anchor for my system. But the Toshiba is also getting replaced by a Sharp 65 inch Aquos LCD tv. A friend of mine has a 42 inch Sharp LCD that is just stunning to watch. So I'm really excited to see what the upgraded tv will look like in conjunction with the upgraded sound system. It feels like christmas!

My parents have a 46" Sharp and it is one of the few LCDs that can display a passed football with out a blurring.

ALL the latest PLasmas and LCD look incredible and so much better than the ones from just last year(not sure if it is just a marketing ploy by retailers). I was just looking at the 58"(?) plasma by Samsung, a series 8 and right beside it was a series 7, the colors were much richer and everything looked to show even more detail on the series 8. I am almost glad I can no longer afford a new TV this year, can't wait to see what they have in store for next year.

I concur with this statement, especially since your room is square.

What?

Oh, I thought someone was talking to me.

I have a web crawler set up to alert me when someone posts "square" and "room" anywhere on the internet. If they also post the word "suckage", I get paged.

Square room suckage..........Hi Mark.