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Newbie - Replacing front speakers & going 5.0! Advice needed :)

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on an AV forum, so please be gentle.

I have come here to get the best from my set up, share my experiences and learn more about audio. I currently have the following which I purchased around 6-9 months ago from Richer Sounds:

  • Front Speakers - Monitor Audio Bronze 2
  • Centre Speaker - Monitor Audio Bronze Centre
  • AV Receiver - Yamaha RX-V481
  • Cable - Chord Company C-Screen
  • Banana Plugs: Cambridge Audio V2
I listened to the Bronze 6's recently and absolutely loved them, they sounded amazing compared to the Bronze 2's. I plan to move by Bronze 2's to the back and use them as my rear speakers so I can get the Bronze 6's for the front and have a 5.0 set up. I don't plan on going 5.1 as I live in a top floor flat, floor standers will provide enough bass.

I enjoy TV, movies & music. I probably care about music quality first, movie quality/experience second. 

I wouldn't mind stretching the budget a little bit and getting a floor stander from the new Monitor Audio Silver 6G range, but my OCD says to get the Bronze 6's so my set up is uniform.

I also wouldn't mind spending a little bit extra on cable/banana plugs if the extra money is worth it for floor standers.

I am fairly new to this and £699 is a fair amount of money to me so I want me make sure I won't have any issues with acoustics, sound reflections, speaker placement, bass, clarity, bottlenecks, surround sound and anything else which I need to consider!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)
dan89
auxinput
2,920 posts
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and theorize that it has to do with weight of the driver cone.  The very large woofers (6-1/2" and larger) need to be able to reproduce the very low frequencies.  This means they need to push a lot of air.  The driver cone structure needs to be very strong and that means thickness and weight.  The control/damping of the driver is also affected by the surround.  While the driver cone and magnet could reproduce the midrange frequencies, it is going to be hampered by the weight and structure of the cone (moving mass).  The midrange drivers are designed to be as light as possible with no restrictions on the higher movement frequencies (i.e. between 300 hz and 4000 hz).  The damping of the driver has to be looked at slightly differently as well so that it does not "ring" or break-up in any bad way.
tls49's avatar
tls49
1,351 posts
 

dan89 I suggest you look at specifications on Monitor Audio's website, mainly the "Recommend Amplifier Requirements" for those different models. The Bronze 2 is 30-100, however the Silver 500 is 80-250. I'm sure that Yamaha receiver works fine with the Bronze 2, but it is not adequate power for the Silver 500. The Yamaha is rated at 80w/ch with 2 channels driven. Using 5 channels will cause that to drop. Found reviews on similar Yamaha receivers and they experienced drops approaching 50%. IMHO, you should upgrade to a more powerful receiver first.

dan89 OP
5 posts
 
That makes sense auxinput, thank you for the explanation. That steers me more towards the Silver 300 opposed to the Bronze 6. 

@tls49 that is a very good point, my receiver is only just meeting the minimum requirements for the Silver 300 and that's with 2 channels. I don't really want to upgrade my receiver... I haven't really had it that long so it would be difficult explaining that one to the misses. Could I get a separate amplifier to power the floor standers, is that what bi-amping is? 
auxinput
2,920 posts
 

Dan - normally you could use the pre-outs on a receiver, but your model RX-V481 does not have pre-outs.  It is actually a pretty low-end receiver.  Like tls49 said, it's rated for 80 watts per channel into 2 channels.  When all channels driven, it can drop to something like 40 watts.  When your doing a HT movie this can become critical because the receiver can start clipping/distorting the sound because the power supply is not large enough to drive the speakers.  This can result in burned out tweeters and damaged voice coils. 

You could do something like this:

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_543ADP12/Russound-ADP-1-2-Speaker-level-to-Line-level-Adapter.html?tp=9070

It's not optimal, but if you really want to continue with your current receiver, it's your only way to add an external amp.  There are cheaper speaker-to-rca convertors, but they are usually limited to 50 watts / channel.  It's up to you.

If you're playing at the level of Monitor Audio Silver, you will probably want to get a more reference receiver or amp anyways. 

This is not the same thing as bi-amping.

tls49's avatar
tls49
1,351 posts
 
Dan, your current Yamaha receiver is limited in it's capability. Even though possible, it's not really a good idea to add an amplifier and it alone, is just not powerful enough for some speakers without the risk of damage, as auxinput pointed out. I still say you should upgrade the receiver first or just be happy with the Bronze series of speakers.

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