Very basic stereo amp
Weeksy
Posts: 6,139 Forum Member
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Hi all,
Looking for a very basic stereo amp, around 75 watts I'd imagine, with say 3 line-level inputs, and ideally a remote control! Less than £100 ideally.
Anything you would recommend?
Looking for a very basic stereo amp, around 75 watts I'd imagine, with say 3 line-level inputs, and ideally a remote control! Less than £100 ideally.
Anything you would recommend?
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For something better try Richersounds
http://www.richersounds.com/productlist/hi-fi-separates/separates/amplifiers-receivers/1
And unless you go for their "graded" stock I think you may need to up the budget a bit if you want 75W per channel. But power output is not the most important measurement anyway. You may be surprised at just how little power you are actually using in normal listening. You could be using single figure watts most of the time. So a 30W per channel amp will often do fine for most normal sized living rooms.
But you don't mention what if any speakers you have. It is important to match the amplifier to the speakers. Hooking up a 75W amp to a pair of speakers that can only take 10W could lead to you blowing the speakers.
If the amplifier is designed to work into say 8ohm speakers and you have 2ohm speakers than you risk tripping the protection circuits in the amp at best or damaging the amp at worst.
And just remember that cheap and cheerful kit often uses spurious units like PMPO or similar to describe power ratings. Just because they give bigger numbers. The only reall measurement worth bothering with is RMS. Which will often be a very much smaller number
http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/level5/module.jsp?moduleId=cpc/505743.xml
Even this would blow it out of the water quality-wise, although it does lack a remote. It's not as powerful as you mention, but as above that's unlikely to matter as much as you might think:
http://www.richersounds.com/product/amplifiers-receivers/cambridge-audio/a1-version-3/camb-a1v3-blk
Richer Sounds is a good source for budget gear but even they can't match the package offered by the Acoustic Solutions amp. The first amp from R-Snds with remote is £164.
75W is an ambitious power target, and unless the speakers are horrendously inefficient then it's overkill anyway. 40W RMS (a decent and realistic way to measure) is more than ample from the SP103.
The alternatives would be a second-hand stereo amp (but the spec and with remote would still be a challenge), or a new or second-hand AV amp. You'd certainly get remote, but it wouldn't be simple or sound as good for music I suspect as the SP103.
Here's a s/h Yamaha AV amp for £50 - LINK
Good luck with whatever you decide.
http://www.richersounds.com/product/amplifiers-receivers/cambridge-audio/a5-v2-graded/camb-a5-v2-blk-grd
60W per channel. But don't think that it is twice as loud as the amp linked to above. Our ears don't work that way. It will be louder certainly but not as much as you may think.
And of course you haven't mentioned what if any speakers you are planning to use with your new amp?
you could certainly get a budget dvd home cinema for that money, with speakers
note that there is hardly any difference between 30wpc and 75wpc
30w rms will go very loud. - its more a factor of the amps ability to deliver power surges when the speakers need it, without clipping, which can damage the speakers