2. amps-preamps
  3. 189476-170020

Small amp or all in 1 choice?

My wife and I are in the process of building a small 850 SF Florida vacation home. It will be ready early fall 2024. We are going to put 4 ceiling mounted speakers in the entertainment/living room for viewing tv and streaming music. The TV will be on the wall above a small fireplace with a 14" X 60" granite shelf above the fireplace to hold the electronics, router etc. I am going with a simple "lean and clean" look so no visible speakers in front. I want an "All in One" unit that will accept an HDMI/Arc connection for TV and also have the internal DAC for streaming background music. I was looking at the SVS wireless Pro soundbase but it only drives 2 speakers so I either need to find a similar all in one with HDMI ARC input that can power all 4 speakers or find a small outboard amp to drive the other pair of speakers. My wife is sensitive to to the shrill sounding cheap amps so that needs to be considered.  I really do not want to put a lot of money into this as the house is expensive and taxing the funds. We are starting from scratch here and EVERYTHING is new, tv, appliances, furniture, etc. I looked at the Cambridge stuff but $3000 is too much money for the model that drives 4 speakers so I think I just need to find a nice outboard amp to mate with the SVS. Any suggestions as to what to look at? I've been through the stuff on Crutchfield. I guess I'd like to be around $400-$500 for the amp, of if there is a all in one that drives 4 speakers and has the HDMI input like $1200-$1500 all in? Any ideas? Also I know I could just buy a HT Receiver but wanted to keep things smaller in scale to fit the shelf @ 14 inches deep. A receiver won't fit.

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Showing 1 response by benanders

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benanders
222 posts
 

Hi @fthompson251 , you said you’re doing dual stereo in-ceiling (why?) and you got a few rounds of advice before calling on folks to check their audiophile hats… after you shied away from small chip amps due to your wife not liking a shrill-sounding device? C’mon now, stop being the pot calling the kettles, hey? 😉

Many of those small stereo amps would probably work well enough running speakers in parallel, but HDMI ARC won’t be common on small stuff since the former’s designed primarily for multichannel HT and the size you want is more desktop hifi. I agree using a secondary remote for a stereo mini amp to control TV volume is not ideal.

I’d think the sound compromises of sticking a quad of large woofers in the ceiling would be considerably more problematic for your wife’s ears than any particular small chip amp. Those big drivers, depending in part on which you use, could wind up beaming some of your frequency range in a way you didn’t hear with the previous 3” drivers; could give rather different results than you expect, especially without a typical AVR’s inbuilt software.

miniDSP now has a unit with HDMI ARC-in, but many devices as that one still won’t address ATMOS (your Apple TV might handle that suitably upstream, though, so maybe not a prob for that TV). They also are not cheap.

Your priorities and constraints don’t seem to be very well-matched for this project. Take some time and read up on available devices more would be my main recommendation. Not sure what to say about in-ceiling 8” drivers, maybe I misread something. Very unconventional choice, so, interesting.

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