Do old speakers and a new amp work?

[Glasgow Adam]

I am lookign to upgrade several bits, but cannot afford to do it all at once, so i would like some help on what to do first.

I have a panasonic home cinema in a box (apx £400). My plan at the moment is to first buy a new amp (at the £1000 range) and hook up the panasonic 5.1 speakers to it. then early next year get the speakers to go with the amp.

Is this a sensible way round to upgrade, or should i get both together or speakers first?

thanks!

 

[Dankeech]

IMO Best option would be to buy both the Amp & Speakers at once if possible. That way you could audition together as one amp may not sound to your liking with one set of speakers for instance.

... unless you bought your Amp with you to your local hifi when you get the speakers.

Of course, that means you spend a whole lot of money in one go.....

 

[michael.redfern]

Yes, possibly it's best to get both together. However, there's no technical problem with just changing the amp and using the old speakers.

Perhaps you could audition new amps with speakers you intend to buy in future (generally speaking, though the models may be updated, the particular manufacturer's "Family sound" doesn't change much. Ok, it'll sound very different with your olsd speakers at home, but it'll sound great again once the new ones are in place.

The other option is to take your all-in-one speakers with you and hook up amps to them for auditions, but bear in mind that speakers you buy in future will have to cater to your original choice.

I guess it depends on whether it's a long term buy or not.

 

[akhc]

no reason why u can't just do the amp or speakers first. I used a pair of TDL RTL 3s for years and at one point had them biamped with MF amps costing many times more than the speakers before I finally upgraded them to a pair of PMCs. bottom line, if u like the sound then it's easy enough to demo amps around a pair of speakers (home trial via any of the audio shops in Glasgow) or even the other way around (carting amps into shop to listen to speakers).

 

[Mentally]

I personally recommend upgrading the speakers first because they effect the sound the most. A 1,000 pound amp won't give you a difference in sound worth the money (it won't even sound like a 500 pound difference). The speakers are your main problem.

 

[Knyght_byte]

nothing wrong with upgrading over time, i did it, took me 2 years, but i now have a very nice setup that makes me mucho happy

Being honest you cannot really buy the speakers first, because quite simply you dont have anything to drive them with, if you blow £1000 on speakers they will need something a bit more than the amp from a all-in-one HT box for £400 to drive them. If you underdrive them you might damage them. Unless you want satellites, then it isnt quite so much of an issue, but still not advisable.

If you buy it all together under a £1,000 budget, yes it will be an improvement on what you have, but you are still doing yourself out of a better experience.

Personally i would go with the amp first, £1,000 buys you some very nice kit nowadays, lots of future use options on it, plenty of power, etc. Then at a later date you can add speakers......you dont even have to buy them all at once, most times if a total speaker package would be worth close to £2,000, the manufacturers normally have that line available in shops for about 2 years give or take.....so wait till a point when a few differnt manufacturers have just realised new lines, then audition, and if you cant afford the whole package, buy it in chunks, i got my front stereo pair first, then i added the centre and surrounds half a year later, then i added a pair of rear surrounds after that, and then a sub.....took some time, but tbh i'm much happier now than i would have been with a setup worth less than half the cost that i originally thought i'd do. If your patient it can be rewarding....if you are not patient then splurge now....lol

 

[saibot]

Just wondering here, if an amp worth £1,000 ,(which no doubt will have plenty more power than the original panasonic box), could damage the 5.1 speakers ??

 

[Mentally]

The fact an amp costs 1,000 pounds doesnt mean it has lots of watts. However, if it does have lots of watts a wrong usage can damage the speakers.

Why can't a cheap amp drive expensive speakers? Have you ever heard of the T-AMP? a 15W amp that sounds lovely and costs only 25$. This amp drives very expensive speakers very nicely (not at high volumes but mediocre is fine too). All you need is a speaker with high sensitivity and a stable impedance that doesn't drop below 5-6 ohm.

 

[pragmatic]

High quality ampage is unlikey to damage your speaker unless you try to drive them behond there physical abilites, but unless the speakers truely are terrible this would probably be behond any safe listening level.

Braking speaker by powering them from an amp that is not upto the job is mor like to brake the speaker or amp, possibly even both. If you start to hear what is called 'cliping' distortion or sort of hicups from the speakers your pushing your amp behond its limits and you need to turn the volume down before you do some damage.