Pre Amp + Amp to run B&W 803S

In that budget range I would probably look at the rotel line. I would run a RB-1090 with those speakers.

There is a Classe CA300 presently on sale on AGON for $1500 which is a great price. I have a Classe CA200 and a Classe preamp with B&W 802 speakers. The combination sounds great to me. I was tempted to buy the CA300 but I don't really have a need for it now.

Thanks Mlawitm and Papajoe,

I looked around, did some research. How about Musical Fedility A5 IntAMP? It has the power required, Heard great reviews about it, and dosent pinch me as much? Any comments and suggestions most welcome.

I have heard the Musical Fidelity M250 monoblocks running 802's and I was very impressed with those. Big bang for the buck IMHO.

Thank you Mlawitm
More on this. Did more research. As cosmetics are not of any priority, Saw the Yamaha P3500S Amp. heard great reviews about it as well, and costs much less than the british makes. Any input on that. and any suggestions on the preAmp that Pairs well with the Yamaha to power the 803s?

I don't know about yamaha but I do know that I have heard MF with 802's and B&W owns Classe and Rotel. I know that for B&W most run Classe or Mac some Rotel and I chose Pass. It really comes down to your budget and what sounds good to your ears.

To keep costs to a min i chose the following setup,
I know mac's, classe, rotel are best paired with B&W's, but to keep my spending under 2K
i decided to go for Parasound - Halo P3 + Yamaha P3500s + bluejeans cables.

thank you all for the advice

Scorpious,
It looks like the Yamaha is a professional amp--like those found in nightclubs. What drew you to these amps? It looks from the spec sheet that these amps don't even have a single ended input. How are you planning on connecting them?
Just curious.

Pepe

Balanced XLR inputs. from balanced output from a PreAmp.

http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/Images/ProAudio/Product/Views/pseries_amp_rear.jpg

Pretty sure you will have trouble driving 803S to decent output levels with a $2K integrated; it's a real burden on underbuilt amps. Not a ROTEL-sound fan at all, so not an option to me at all.

Maybe try to find a used Parasound A21 power amp, stable to 400w at 4ohms, new at $2K.

Good luck.

I have not heard the 803s mated to anything in a system that was familiar to me, but at that price point, you could get some decent seperates. I went the route of the DNA-125 from McCormack and Eastern Electric Minimax pre, and it was a very nice sound for $1500 used. You could probably get a used DNA-1 if you needed more juice, the Minimax, and still be at $2k. Upgrade paths are readily available for the McCormacks down the line. Or, perhaps a C-J MF2250a mated to decent pre would keep you under $2k and sound great.

you bought speakers that require a very high quality amplifier. B&Ws will sound terrible if you use the amp that is not totally up to the level of the speakers. This is the biggest disadvantage with B&Ws - they require top notch amplification. What you are thinking of doing will

I would definitely go the way of separates. At the least, I would start with the McCormack DNA-1 but nothing less than that. For preamp you can pick up a used Sonic Frontiers Line-1 and may be fit into $2k barely.
I really don't know if purchasing these speakers were a money well spent if you were not going to provide the amplification that is on par with the speakers.
It's like filling up a Ferrari with regular gas.

Thanks all for the kind advice.

I will be connecting up the system in a day, and listen to it and give my feed back.
Parasound Halo P3, Yamaha P2500s II & B&W 803s, Blue jeans cables.

Scorpious