Amp for a set of Jamo speakers

D B

Novice Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2013
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Good evening,

You all seem like a gang of well informed, helpful people, so I've come here to pick your brains.

I have recently acquired a set of Jamo speakers, being:

2x E470 (Jamo E 470
2x E430 (Jamo E 430
1x E4CEN (can't find a helpful link)

I have two thoughts about what to do with them:

1) Sell them: They are finished in the Cherry finish, I think, but it seems pretty difficult to find exact confirmation of what each finish looks like. There is some, minor, cosmetic damage: one of the E470s has some damage to the mesh front cover. No effect on sound quality at all, but if they were to take pride of place somewhere, it would be worth replacing. Then E4CEN has a dink on the front upper right corner. Unnoticeable from any distance, but obvious if you look for it.

All the speakers work. I have a copy of Chesky Record’s Ultimate Demonstration Disk from when I was buying IEMs, which sounds absolutely fantastic through these speakers (to me, anyway!). They have absolutely exceptional “focus” and deal amazingly with “transients”, as those guys like to call them. They really don’t feel like they need a separate subwoofer either! There were some non-musical sounds coming from the speakers that were removed as soon as I removed the front covers, but I left them off for the rest of the listening session, so I don’t know if they just needed a wiggle or some actual repairs/impact maintenance to seat them properly.

What sort of value would this set have? It's currently near Bristol, England, but for the right price I would be prepared to package them up safely for a courier to take care of. Is anyone on here interested?

2) What I would really like to do, provided there isn't too much money to be lost, is keep them. They do sound genuinely fantastic on my old man's Marantz amp, but I would need to get a suitable amplifier to run them. I took the opportunity to grab a SONY STR-DB790 that was going very cheaply on Ebay. Although this seemed like a reasonable bang/buck amp from a few years ago for quiet, temporary, use, it would obviously be soul destroying for someone to crank the volume up and trash the speakers with what I think is an under-specced amp. So…

I’d like some advice on which amp to pair with this set. I would like to spend no more than £200, ideally a lot less, but if someone can persuade me that it makes sense, I would be prepared to set aside some more cash. I have absolutely no problem buying second hand, especially not if it’s through the classifieds on a forum such as this.

I’ve seen the Arcam Alpha series recommended a lot on here as an entry level model, but the ones I looked at seem to only have four channels. As I have it, I would really like to use the centre speaker as well!

I’m quite happy to admit that I don’t know much about setting up a hi-fi system at all. I can quite happily hook the speakers up to the output posts, the various inputs to the input connectors, then push buttons until it works, equalise the system until it sounds good, and get angry when someone screws with my equalising or cranks my bass up excessively. But that’s about it.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I want a receiver, just a power amp. Music tends to come from my PC’s Creative sound card, although I’ll probably be changing this to a laptop soon (with external USB DAC if it turns out to be necessary), my Galaxy S4, or, on rare occasions, the TV/freeview box. My current listening experience comes from my old man’s hi-fi setup, a variety of approx. £50 surround sound setups, and these little guys:

Rockit Sounds R-50

I’d be using the Jamos primarily for personal listening, with some party listening and a small amount of movie watching.


Wow. Please excuse my monumental first post, and thanks very much for any advice anyone can offer, or even just thoughts on what you might do in the situation!
 
Welcome to the Forums. I only really came here to point out that whatever your Jamo's are, they are probably a 4 Ohm load. And that it's going to matter :)

Cheers,
Mike.
 
Also, we have a dedicated Classifieds section on here and trading outside that area is not allowed.
 
Thanks for both of those, Flimber, you're right on the impedence, but the speakers do say 4/8 ohms on them. Does this mean they can operate happily at either level? Or does it require a capable amp to deal with this? I'm going to assume the electrician in me can't just stick a 4 ohm resistor in series and make it all ok...

I meant to ask for some advice on whether I can use that Sony amp, short term, at low volumes without damaging or overheating anything.

I saw your classifieds area, and would definately move any trading discussion to there. Is it ok to ask my question as above in this forum though, to keep it all together, or do I need to split the post up?

Thanks again, already!

edit: typo
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom