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General opinion about ADCOM amplifiers

I was just curious to get everyone's take on ADCOM

I want to upgrade from a reciever to an amp/pre-amp for HT.

I have been looking into Nohr's Le Amp and Le amp 2, i see stuff on the web that says these can go toe to toe with $2000+ Bryston amps, however, im a firm believer that you get what you pay for.

So ive also been looking at ADCOM, there are alot of inexpencive ADCOM amplifiers in the classified.
Ive seen 150w per ch for under $1000, which is kinda the area im aiming for. unfortunatly, money is a limitation.

I know alot of people here have had Adcom and i am curious to see what he general opinion of these amplifiers is. Ive seen them at high mid-end / low high-end retailers but never heard them.

My reciever can double as a pre-amp for 5 channels, which is what i will be using untill i get a good pre-amp with 7.1, then i want to run a couple real good solid powerful monoblocks to the fronts and use the 5ch amp for the rest.
Eventually, those front speakers and the monoblocks will get slowly released from the HT and converted to a 2chan setup.

opinions on adcom? Good value for the money? Over rated? reliable? do they break down?

i got some good stuff, but this reciever part is killing me. It sounds GREAT until you apply any heavy volume, then the amplifier in the reciever loses control and things start to distort. Ugh. Yuck
audiophanatik

Showing 1 response by sean

sean
6,231 posts
 
Based on my past experience with various Adcom products and having repaired a few, the 535 and 5802 are the only amps worth buying and that is only if you can get a good deal on them. The 535 is basically too small for most "good sounding" low efficiency / low impedance loudspeakers but may work fine with higher efficiency speakers, smaller rooms or systems that do not require great amounts of dynamic range / sustained spl levels. The 5802 is still in production, so the cost will be relatively high on the unsed market. Most of the others are nothing special and not really well suited for full range reproduction. Some of their bigger amps will provide "muscle" in terms of high level bass output, but even that is not well controlled.

As far as Adcom customer service / technical support goes should you ever have problems with one of their products, they are good to work with and quite reasonable in terms of their charges for out of warranty repairs or parts. In this respect, they are much better than many of the "high end" companies and could teach more than a few of them a lesson or two. Sean
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