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B&W 805 D4: which 5 channel power amp should I go with (home theater): Parasound or Rotel

Hearing Hans Zimmer score play during scenes from The Dark Knight, Inception & Interstellar is life changing. The 805 D4 works great for l/r speaker for movies. Of course I need to add a center channel which would either be the HTM81 D4 or the HTM82 D4 but I’ll save that for another discussion.

Here are the power amps I’m looking at:

Parasound:

- Halo A 51

- Halo A 52+

Rotel:

- RMB-1585

- RMB-1585MKII

 

I’m not able to go into an audio store to test out power amps  so I would like your expert opinion on which might work better with these speakers or if you have any recommendations for 5 channel power amp then I would gladly go take a look at those online.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

candyisdandy
maxwave's avatar
maxwave
986 posts
 

The surround speakers are not the most important.
The center and fronts are .

I have ATI 200W/ch ; 4 channels ; class D ;and I am very pleased with it.

ATI is very good and very reliable.

 

You can always look at McIntosh multi channels for B&W

candyisdandy OP
5 posts
 

maxwave - The fronts will be 805d4. Center I'm looking at the HTM81 D4. I'm in a small dedicated home theater room (10x13). I plan to add room treatment by Spring. Just need help picking out the right power amp for me. I'll check out ATI :)

For surrounds I'm not sure. I don't really care as I'm really just focus on the 3 front speakers. I might not add surrounds but I'd like to be future proof.

 

For subs I'm looking at SVS pb2000/pb3000 and Perlisten R210S/12S

soix
9,694 posts
 

I got to hear the 804D3s with my McCormack DNA 0.5 amp and it was a nice pairing. The McCormack doesn’t warm up the sound per se, but it has a nicely fleshed-out midrange that balances out the treble nicely and, most importantly, doesn’t aggravate the diamond tweets. The other thing the DNA 0.5 did was allow the 804s to image/soundstage like crazy — big, wide, and deep.  I’m not sure but the Halo amps might be a little warmer sounding so that’d be worth exploring, but I would certainly avoid the Rotel amps as they won’t help you at all. Hope this helps.

erik_squires
16,295 posts
 

I think NAD makes a multichannel amp with Hypex modules you should also consider.

terry9
2,353 posts
 

Are you open to used equipment? Because the Bryston 9B SST is what I use with a Magnepan system - just a little to the warm side, 20 year warrantee. Yes, 20 years - I've abused Bryston amps with never a failure.

SST series is quite a bit cleaner than ST series, warmer than the SST 2 series - or so I'm told. I use a 9B SST in the HT and a 4B SST for bass in the 2 channel system.

Good luck!

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