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RE: Best Amp for Audiophile

Hi fstein

As you can see there are many good suggestions listed (Bryston, etc), however you’ve alluded to a point where price can be a concern. If this is the case, I would suggest purchasing a used pro-amp from eBay some of which can be really good deals.

I have purchased 2x Yamaha P2100 (85 to 100watts / chn) and 7x P2200 (200 to 235 watts / chn). These older amps (1976) are not true pro-types and would be better classified as semi-pro, but they definitely are very listenable with an excellent audio quality that is simply not available in current generation of amps. The smaller P2100 weighs in at 35 pound and the larger P2200 tips the scales at 45 pounds, (the handles help at lot when moving them). They do not use fans and have large side mounted heatsinks which makes them very suitable for home use.

These amps had a bad reputation in the pro-field as they were not forgiving to wiring errors or speaker faults and usually resulted in blown output transistors of which there were only 6 per channel (too few for a 200+ watt amp). Also, even though they had XLR input connectors, the unit did not have balanced inputs, which although not important for home use were essential for pro use. Another negative point was the over temperature sensors, which if triggered only lit up a LED and did nothing else (i.e. did not shut-down the affected channel). In a pro-environment you could not ask the mixer/controller to constantly watch the amps to see if there was an over-temperature LED on.

For these reasons the Yamaha amps were not preferred for pro-work BUT they are highly prized for home use, I have even seen a defective but very clean unit (no rack rash) sell for over $600 on eBay, the reason being that these amps are really easy to fix, they use mostly standard components.

A feature that almost everyone loves about the larger P2200 amps are the gorgeous large peak reading meters. This I believe was one of the very few manufactures to use a true log-calibrated fast-ballistics peak-reading meters on their equipment, so if you have power sensitive speakers this is a must-have item. Furthermore, the user manual that came with the P2200 is considered by many as one of the best tutorials available for audio amplifier installations, and is a must read for anyone working with sound. It can be gotten for free at the Yamaha manual web site (see link below).

Yamaha tried to correct the pro-issues when they designed the P2002-M a successor to the P2200 in the 1980’s that looked very similar to the P2200. It had 8 transistors per side (instead of 6), true balanced inputs, and a workable over-temperature shutdown, with white peak-reading meters (instead of black) but some people found that it was not quite as clean sounding as the original.

Another semi-pro amp suggestion would be the Crown DC-300A (avoid the DC300 model). Although not quite as listenable as the Yamahas, it was a very rugged unit with lots of reserve power that could easily drive 4 ohm loads. It also does not have balanced inputs or a fan, which was one of its failings as a pro-amp as it tended to over-heat if not cooled with add-on fans. However for home use this was not a problem.

Other amps that could be considered would be the ESS 500, the Phase Linear 700, SAE, Dynaco 400, Bose 1800 all were really powerful however many people found that these units tended to color the sound somewhat. Most had the same failing as the DC-300A listed above for pro-use however for home use the problems would not be an issue.

Hope this helps

Max Caliber
(a one-time JBL service manager)




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