All I can find on this one is good hardware reviews, nothing about it's sonic signature. Has anyone heard this amp? Sonance Cinema 5150 ULTRA THX
Picking an amplifier
I have the following speakers:
NHT 2.1 Front LR 200W @ 6ohms
NHT AC1 Center 150W @ 8 ohms
NHT SW2 Subwoofer 200W @ 8 ohms
The rear speakers are inconsequential (and boxed up) they might come out to play when I move to bigger digs.
I’ve been using NHTs 214s and 216s, (think lightbulbs) but the market is drying up. I remain unconvinced they are worth the shipping & costs to repair.
My (current) short list of replacement amps:
Outlaw Audio model 770 7 (7 channels)
Bryston 9B ST (5 channels) (2 years left on warranty)
Parasound 5125 (5 channels)
The budget is $1000, I have located sources for all three at or below $1000.
Any/all discussion of suitability, repair outlook, and peanut shells welcome. From a listening perspective, I've been fine with the NADs, but am priced out of the newer models. Nuts, I might even repair the NADs if I find the right person with the skills & tools.
NHT 2.1 Front LR 200W @ 6ohms
NHT AC1 Center 150W @ 8 ohms
NHT SW2 Subwoofer 200W @ 8 ohms
The rear speakers are inconsequential (and boxed up) they might come out to play when I move to bigger digs.
I’ve been using NHTs 214s and 216s, (think lightbulbs) but the market is drying up. I remain unconvinced they are worth the shipping & costs to repair.
My (current) short list of replacement amps:
Outlaw Audio model 770 7 (7 channels)
Bryston 9B ST (5 channels) (2 years left on warranty)
Parasound 5125 (5 channels)
The budget is $1000, I have located sources for all three at or below $1000.
Any/all discussion of suitability, repair outlook, and peanut shells welcome. From a listening perspective, I've been fine with the NADs, but am priced out of the newer models. Nuts, I might even repair the NADs if I find the right person with the skills & tools.
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- 101 posts total
It looks like the Sonance was made by ATI for Sonance company. The older ATI amps tended to be very strong muscle in the bass, but tended to be somewhat bright. I have also heard that you need to turn on the volume pretty high before you get the dynamics. My gut feeling is that the Sonance will not be as good as the Outlaw in sound quality. Quick question. You said you are connecting from a computer using digital optical cable. Are you using the toslink output from the computer motherboard? Or are you using a toslink output on a soundcard? If it's a soundcard, what is the exact brand/model of the soundcard? Also, what operating system are you running? (i.e. Windows 7, Linus, Mac OS 10). Neutral amp to a warm speaker will obviously be somewhat warm. Warm amp to neutral speaker will be the same. Warm amp to warm speaker will indeed cause an even more warm sound. Different pieces of equipment can compensate for each other (like pairing a bright/cold preamp with a warm amplifier). With a warm preamp you can start to lose resolution in the sound waveforms. It is important to know that once you start losing resolution, you can never get it back. For example, if you have a very warm preamp, putting a high-resolution amplifier and speakers will not "magically" bring back the resolution in the original waveform. |
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A (LGA1151) motherboard has optical link by RealTek->Sony DSP-EP9ES Windows 10 Browsers: Chrome, IE Videos are on VLC media player unless it's a bizarre format, then I either find a codec or dig up something that handles it native. Realtek & VLC player have various EQ & audio modifiers (ambiance, compression, room correction, DTS Studiosound, DTS settings) Most of the time I find that the audio hardware & Sony settings suits my taste w/o modification. Optical outs on MOBOs are almost a unicorn. Right now I see 10 on Newegg (out of hundreds) I'm looking around for a site that reviews the various DAC chips. A site that contains a list of who's using what classes of amps by model. We have such a thing for various computer components. Hard disk drives, motherboards, etc. |
- 101 posts total