B&W 805 D4: which 5 channel power amp should I go with (home theater): Parasound or Rotel


Hearing Hans Zimmer score play during scenes from The Dark Knight, Inception & Interstellar is life changing. The 805 D4 works great for l/r speaker for movies. Of course I need to add a center channel which would either be the HTM81 D4 or the HTM82 D4 but I’ll save that for another discussion.

Here are the power amps I’m looking at:

Parasound:

- Halo A 51

- Halo A 52+

Rotel:

- RMB-1585

- RMB-1585MKII

 

I’m not able to go into an audio store to test out power amps  so I would like your expert opinion on which might work better with these speakers or if you have any recommendations for 5 channel power amp then I would gladly go take a look at those online.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

candyisdandy

Showing 2 responses by soix

I got to hear the 804D3s with my McCormack DNA 0.5 amp and it was a nice pairing. The McCormack doesn’t warm up the sound per se, but it has a nicely fleshed-out midrange that balances out the treble nicely and, most importantly, doesn’t aggravate the diamond tweets. The other thing the DNA 0.5 did was allow the 804s to image/soundstage like crazy — big, wide, and deep.  I’m not sure but the Halo amps might be a little warmer sounding so that’d be worth exploring, but I would certainly avoid the Rotel amps as they won’t help you at all. Hope this helps.

This is as good or better than anything else you’ll find, and that it’s only $1200 is a bonus…

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650007959-mccormack-ht-5-power-amp/

Plus, if you like what you hear and get the itch you can send it to SMcAudio and have them modify it to a SOTA amp.  Best of luck.