What does amplifiers weight has to do with performance? im trying to decide between this 3 amps parasound JC5 73 pounds, Anthem STR 60 pounds Michi S5 by Rotel 132 pounds I can get them around the same price my speakers is modified klipsch KLF 30 preamp is Michi P5 and a pair of SVS SB16 ultra Sony Hap Z1 and Cambridge Azur 851N i really like the looks of STR amp
thanks everyone for great response this is just a small update Whitecameross got me some really good deal on Anthem STR AMP DEMO UNIT can’t pass so I have it looks so gorgeous with meter sound so smooth great bass great details better instrument separation run cool compare to my A21+What blow my mind and surprise me is I have harman Kardon signature 1.5 200 WPC amplifier in my bedroom set up so I decide to try it on my modified KLF 30 and my jaw dropped wow I can’t believe what I’m hearing from that old school amp now I’m on the search for another one to my ears I prefer it better than STR and A21+ All the test was done with Michi P5 and Parasound P6 preamplifier SVS speaker wires and interconnect stock power cords
Wait. Why has no one discussed how a (vacuum) tube amp falls in a vacuum? 🤔 Would certainly be as relevant as weight to an amp’s performance...
One must first decide what class. Older tech (A, A/B) Is going to weigh geometrically/exponentially more than new tech (D,G,H, Hybrid) by necessity. Anyone who has not auditioned the newest new tech (Ice, Hypex, Hybrid) should not dismiss them based upon “old” new tech class D. They offer very good/great performance, can handle difficult loads with ease and dynamic headroom, and come in an efficient package that can be moved around and placed in tight racks/spaces without hernia or fire risk. Oh, and have correspondingly exponentially greater SAF
Sort of Indycar/Formula1 compared to Hummer/Escalade
Are you buying new or used? The price range of the 3 you have listed - 5K? I have had an Anthem integrated. OK for all it offers, including phono. Not heard the others. I have heard some models of Parasound and was not impressed. Your current choices are 1 Anthem integrated (200 wpc), Parasound (400 wpc) and Rotel (500 wpc). Getting the Anthem lets you sell your preamp. MORE than enough power at 200 for your speakers. I would get a Pass INT-60, XA 30.8 or the XA25. The INT-60, which I have had, lets you sell the preamp, saving you some funds. I have also had the XA30.8. Liked them both. Sold them because I like to try out different things and I am, at heart, a tube lover. Again, more than enough power for your speakers. The XA25 actually puts out a lot more than it is rated. Looks are fine but this is audio we talking about.
@arcam88 yes after reading and learned more about weight and performance I will go with Anthem STR AMP i was little bit worry that my current amp A21+ weighs 72 pounds so is kind of downgrade lol i did have some dealers willing to give me up to 25% off MRSP also option to trade my A21+ my only little concern is there’s no a single bad reviews about it from all the reviewers
I own the Anthem STR Integrated and absolutely love it! Would love to have the STR and matching Pre Amp, but out of my reach. Gook luck on your search!
mitch2 Geoff, how many degrees of freedom do you consider your springs have? Typically, a spring is thought to operate in only one degree of freedom, in the case of a vertical spring it would be the z direction. However, depending on the slenderness of the spring (i.e., length vs. diameter), and the weight of the object supported, perhaps a torsional force could allow the spring to rotate. I am curious how the isolation provided by your springs compares to an elastomer type spring such as the Herbies products.
>>>My springs isolate primarily in the vertical direction 🔝 only, but there can be some rotational 🔄 isolation depending on how the system is set up. But simple springs like mine offer no isolation in the horizontal plane 🔛. That’s why a lot of folks use roller bearings AND springs to get isolation in all six directions or most of them anyway. Springs should be selected based on mass of component and the whole shebang should have a very low resonant frequency, 2 or 3 Hz is very good, below 2 Hz even better as there’s a lot of Earth motion in the range 0-5 Hz. I suspect MOST of the vibration especially for the basement or first floor is in the vertical direction. 🔝 So why pay for a Mercedes when a Volkswagen will suffice?
Isolate any amp, even a very heavy one and it will sound better
I have been curious about how my SRA stands work to isolate, damp, or whatever they do for my two new monoblocks. The SRA folks apparently also do work for the defense industry so for them - mum's the word. However, they needed the amplifier's weight, the dimensions of the foot print, and other information about the amps, so they could do their thing and "recalibrate" my stands to match this specific pair of amplifiers (the stands were previously calibrated for their former owner's amplifiers). This "recalibration" was all internal since the stands look identical to when I sent them in to SRA. When I set them up, I was somewhat curious to find that the "legs" of the stands (stainless steel threaded rod) actually attach about halfway up into the depth of the stands, inside of cylindrical pockets accessible from the bottom, and the attachment seems somewhat articulating (by a small amount) so that the legs are not absolutely rigid in the x-y plane but rather seem to allow the platform to have a very small amount of freedom in the x and y directions, but not in the z direction, where maybe the (elastomeric?) internal damping inside of the stand comes into play. Geoff, how many degrees of freedom do you consider your springs have? Typically, a spring is thought to operate in only one degree of freedom, in the case of a vertical spring it would be the z direction. However, depending on the slenderness of the spring (i.e., length vs. diameter), and the weight of the object supported, perhaps a torsional force could allow the spring to rotate. I am curious how the isolation provided by your springs compares to an elastomer type spring such as the Herbies products. While it is fun to think about this stuff, everyone has their own opinion so the best way seems to be to try different products, listen, and keep what you like. I like the SRA stands because they look good and seem to do nothing wrong. BTW, the amps have Stillpoints as footers, which the SRA folks said was basically unnecessary with their stands.
@adurerca ....2 plates in my PD-65 if I remember correctly, intended to isolate the power supplies from the digital stuff. I believe the chassis was copper. The player read the CDs turntable style (upside down) and
visitors would always put them in top-side up and ask, "why doesn't this play?"
My class D was $90/lb and I can carry it with one arm. Previously I had an 88 lb Pass behemoth which I could boil water on for pasta which I do not miss.
Weight obviously exudes feelings of quality. I remember back in the 90’s I opened up my Pioneer elite CD player to find a metal plate affixed in the middle of the chassis with no other purpose I could think of other than to provide weight, either for vibration control or just to add weight.
wolfie62 I have 2” granite sides and bass plate on my amp. My amp weighs 245 lbs. It’s the best amp ever made, bar NONE! The weight of an amp determines its quality. One of the major criteria all should use!
>>>>>That statement is patently false and I can prove it. Isolate any amp, even a very heavy one and it will sound better AND weigh less. It’s pure physics. Case closed. Although there is some advantage to dead mass inertia the whole house is shaking due to seismic type energy and everything in the house is shaking with it. You can’t fool Mother Nature.
I have 2” granite sides and bass plate on my amp. My amp weighs 245 lbs. It’s the best amp ever made, bar NONE! The weight of an amp determines its quality. One of the major criteria all should use!
As usual on this topic, you see people speaking up and comparing amps apples to oranges.
Depending on the efficiency of the speakers one uses, if very efficient, you probably won't need a 200 WPC amp. Then a light 15 WPC clean amp works well and it won't weigh anywhere near what a class A 200 WPC amp would weigh.
no matter how certain people try to get around the fact that electronic equipment is "engineered" and science and technology is absolutely present, they try to make one believe that technology and science aren't a part of it at all. mostly because they don't understand it.
Not taking anything away from Class D amps, if you stick with class A or A/AB amps, you are dealing with linear power supplies , large capacitors, heavy enclosures, heavy heat sinks. most of this is based on the science of power supply design and heat sink design necessary to get rid of unwanted heat from output transistors.
But, if space is an issue and you have efficient speakers, then by-all-means try Class D amps. they are lighter and getting close to well designed class A or A/AB amps. not there yet, in my opinion.
But, not everyone wants really heavy, large amps, so they are opting for lighter amps and more efficient speakers that don't require large output amps.
Well made transformers are not light or inexpensive. high voltage capacitors are not small. large output transistors require sufficient heatsinking.
shortcuts will result in lesser sound quality.
But, it depends on you and what you have (speakers, rooms size) and the sound quality of the music you prefer. Oh, and also, your budget.
My MC2250 weighed 80 lbs. It was a gift, so, Zero per pound. Until, moving it out of a low shelf, I got a torn meniscus in my knee, surgery, .... it turned out to be a darn expensive amp.
@millercarbon no one pay full MRSP you can get discount 15-30% off MRSP or 30-50% off on open box demo or used market I was able to get 25% discount on my current Parasound A21+ and P6 new
due to my current situation I’m not interested in tube amp or any integrated thanks though
@dseltz thanks for the response my 2 channel set up is including 7.1.2 HT in family living room with kids so definitely no tube amp I will be interested to add tube preamp in future I really love the presentation of SS and tube preamp combo
My single ended Dennis Had Firebottle amp puts out 12 to 17wpc and weighs a massive 15lbs. Sure, it seems like I should reinforce the floor for the thing, but somehow I get by fine...15lbs...if it was dropped on your head from 10 stories above I'd want it back as hey, who the hell is dropping my amp from 10 stories up? I hate that.
Possibly just above your price point, but have you considered a tube amp such as the Audion KT120? Should easily drive your Klipsch and include the toroidal transformers in 36 pounds (if weight is not a selling point for you) All Class A
If you are looking for SS I would highly recommend the FirstWatt SIT-3
The McCormack DNA1 was my first real high end amp. Inside the box was this cheesy looking pointy nut screw thing. The manual called it a grounding spike and said try something like a coin under the spike. Looked silly and the pathetic but I tried it and sure enough it did tighten things up a bit. This was back early 90's. So Steve McCormack was an early adopter in the area of vibration control.
That's really what is going on. Everything vibrates and mass tunes the vibrations. But not only mass. The same mass of lead, copper, iron, stainless steel, sugar, books, wood, carbon fiber, acrylic, will not sound the same.
The thing is, where this comes into play with us and the OP question, this whole mass matters question is but one of many the designers and manufacturers have long since taken into account. One may do it like Steve all deliberate, another may do it by total disregard as not worth the time/money/effort. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Point is from our point of view all that matters is the result. There's just way too many different variables to think its even remotely possible we could look at something as silly as design and think we are able to figure out what will make the difference and what will not. Which is why we have to go and listen.
But then, once we find the best by listening, then we use our knowledge of things like this to make it even better. Understanding not only mass matters, but stiffness, and damping- and those three are only the three that matter in the area of vibration control. Then there's the circuit design, which we generally have no control over (hardly anyone proficient enough to alter a circuit- note I said alter not merely upgrade parts quality in the same circuit which is a whole different thing). Then there's acoustics, and electricity. Which if you read mahgister he calls these his 3 embeddings. Whatever. Same general idea.
So even something as silly as "does amplifier weight matter?" turns out to have a serious side to it. Its just the silly aspect needs to be stomped to death, because its freaking rampant across the whole audiophile community. Everyone obsessed with arbitrary technical minutia like this when its a (near) total waste of time that could much better be spent listening and learning how this stuff actually sounds.
The weight of an amp results from the philosophy of the designer. If the goal is to have an amp that will linearly increase its power into low impedance loads then it's likely to be heavy. In addition, if the designer prefers Class A bias then that will also add to the weight. For example, I have a Krell KSA 300S that provides 300 watts @ 8 ohms, 600 watts @ 4 ohms, and 1200 watts @ 2 ohms. Very few amplifiers will do this. There is also a automatic biasing feature that causes the amp to run in Class A mode up to high wattages. It weighs 185 lbs.
So why do I need all that power into low impedance loads? Because I run Thiel CS6 speakers that have low sensitivity (87db) and their impedance drops to below 3 ohms for parts of the audio band. This is a brutal load for an amplifier. For a speaker load like this the amplifier's capabilities will make a big difference in how the speakers sound.
Your Klipsch speakers are on the other end of the spectrum compared to my Thiels. They have 102db sensitivity which is very high. You would be fine with an 8 watt Single Ended Triode tube amp if you wanted to go that direction. Because your speakers are easy to drive you have a virtually unlimited selection of amplifiers.
If you had a bias toward tubes (pun intended) then you could go with any number of beautiful tube integrateds or separates. You don't need any more than 30 or 40 watts to shatter the windows unless you have a very big room.
If you are smitten by the appearance of gear then I have a word of warning. Don't look at the Line Magnetic LM-845 Premium integrated amp. It's necessary to see it in person to get the full effect (by the way it's really heavy). It's a little fat for your price range but you may sell the dog and take out a second mortgage to buy it. It wouldn't run my speakers but it's perfect for yours. The LM-845 may be the most beautiful piece of gear I've ever seen.
It’s like cooking. Things such as transformers, caps, transistors ... are like ingredients. They establish an upper limits. And of course how good you are as a chef determines the final finished products. Mr. Pass probably won't be able to do much if he could only use some tiny little transformers.
The designer of my new amplifiers, SMc Audio, agrees and added their new "Gravity Base" to each of my new monoblocks. The Gravity Base is basically a heavy brass plinth that anchors key components within the amplifier and serves as the base. They proclaim the difference is not subtle.
Thanks everyone for inputs I learn a lot so is not always about the weight
Excellent. In return for putting up with the ribbing here's more good solid info than you ever dreamed there was on this subject. Or so I humbly submit, etc, etc.
Mass matters. Don't take my word for it. Put a phone book, dive weight, bag of sugar, anything heavy on top of a CD player, DAC, preamp, whatever. You will hear a difference. Or in case you don't, even better, you can now save yourself a ton of time and money from now on just buy cheap and good looking.
But probably you will notice the sound did change, the bass got fuller, and if it was something soft like the sugar then it also got fuller with warmth but if it was solid like a rock then it got deeper and tighter. And not just the bass but the midrange, and treble is more dynamic.
So mass does matter. Stiffness does matter. Damping matters. Just not at all in the way you were asking, which is why you got so much static. Of course weight does not matter, per se. To be totally honest nothing matters but how it sounds. Take any design, any technology, does not matter. There's tube amps that are tight and etched and grainy and there's solid state amps that are full and liquid and warm. None of these tech things you are so focused on means anything. Only how it sounds. Go and listen. You will see.
I don’t really need more power than A21+ for my current set up just to cover future upgrade
No one needs more than about 30 to 60 tube watts, or about 100 solid state watts. No one. If you think you do all that means is you made a mistake somewhere. Most likely you got sucked into some hard to drive speakers. Happens a lot.
Number One with a bullet thing to keep asking yourself when shopping for amps: If the first watt isn't any good, why in the world would you want 200 more of them?
The preamp looks amazing though for 4K
If you say so. What looks amazing to me for $4k is the Raven integrated. For $4k you get a preamp, and amp, with all the power you need. 30W. PLUS with that you do not need another power cord, interconnect, fuse, cones, shelf, or any of the other stuff which if you cut corners on will insure you never, ever get the performance from that preamp and amp that you paid so dearly for.
My guess would be, just to give you some idea, you are looking at well over $10k in separates to match the performance you will hear with the Raven Nighthawk or Osprey. Well over.
lordrootman: Now you have me intrigued. I bought the Parasound A21 because I thought it was just beautiful with the top panel removed (specs were good too, but it was the looks that got me). Now I have to check out that Anthem STR you are drooling over!
Do you like your current amp the JC1? Are you keeping it? If yes, buy the Anthem. If not, then why change horses? Ie, buy the Parasound JC5. I have the Parasound C2 pre and love it. I'm now using a DAC Maraschino 60 volt amp, beats my 50 to 70 lb hi current amps in every way.
I have a VAC PA 80 80 tube amp that weights 70lbs and a class D amp that weighs 52 lbs Listening pleasure per pound is very good! I won't even mension how heavy my sub is!!
I’ve heard Wyred4Sound class D amps that sounded very good, maybe one of the best bang for the buck amps out there and a Wadia combo driving Vandersteens that sounded awesome. Both high power per pound values. Hey remember good old Bob Carver. He could make a 500 watt class G amp weighing about 15 pounds and sell it for under $1000 😂 (give or take) I love the guy, he made thousands off me in the 80’s
Thanks @cakyol , that was an interesting read. Pass’ thoughts on weight vs. power and amplifier class, and the benefits of a suitably large power supply, seem logical but from the standpoint of sound quality there must be more to it since he continues to design new amplifier lines that apparently sound different/better than his previous amplifiers.
As noted, the size of the transformer is important. Inductors too, and heat sinks are heavy. The bigger the heat sink, the lower the operating temperature, for given heat dissipation.
The amount of real estate inside the enclosure is also important. If the big electrolytic caps are close to either the output transistors or the rectifier, or their heat sinks, they age prematurely. Obviously big enclosures weigh more.
If you live in a rich radio environment, thick metal is a good shield for your delicate electronics, although good layout can substitute. So again, all things being equal, heavier is better - the only problem is that all things aren’t often equal.
Finally, if a guest stubs his toe on 100Kg slabs of aluminum, that toe stays stubbed. Better that than the amp.
Thanks everyone for inputs I learn a lot so is not always about the weight some of emotiva and outlaw stereo amps weigh a lot my current amp A21+ weighs 72 pounds sounds amazing but anthem STR amp is too gorgeous can’t stop looking at them I don’t really need more power than A21+ for my current set up just to cover future upgrade The Michi S5 looks great but 130 pounds no then I need to change my rack and I’m not ready for that The preamp looks amazing though for 4K
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