Totem Arros - Tube Amps ?

Bdgregory,

What are you driving your staffs with ? Are you using 2 sub woofers or just one ?

We were thinking of trying this combo:

Totem Arro
REL STORM (or) Stadium
Mostly Conrad Johnson CAV 50, if not Cary SLI 80
Rega Planet 2000

The one thing that concerns me is CJ CAV 50 lacking a remote. The other one is ...does CJ have a sub woofer out and if I want to go with two sub woofers, how can we do that ?

Thanks
Grakesh

All,

My main concern with Conrad Johnson CAV 50 is its low tube wattage of 45 watts/channel. I know that the max Arros need are 70 watts/chan. Can owners of Arros let me know whether CJ CAAV 50 with 45 watts/ch can drive the Arros properly in 20 x 20 x 8 room ?

Thanks
Prakash

I went through several amps with them as I played around with different setups.

I started with my old trusty Phase Linear 400, w/i about 3 months after I bought Sttafs went to a Parasound HCA-2200. Then to B&K M200s which is where I stayed mostly. I also have a Bedini 100.100 that I used with them on occaision.

I recently bought a pair of Mani-2's which now are in my reference 2-channel rig, the Sttafs are now the fronts in my home theater being driven by a B&K AV5125.

Finally I had them set up for a couple of months on an old Fisher X202 Tube integrated (18 w/c).

I had far more power than they needed in most of these amps. The Fisher actually did a really nice job on them, though I didn't try to push them, but it was really surprising how much volume, adn how clean it was. I was running them w/o a sub in the setup and the bass was excellent . . . in a pretty large room too.

I used only one Storm III and it's as much as I needed. My room is 14x24x8' ceilings.

As for connecting the Sub - with the Rel - you don't want to use a subwoofer pre-out even if you have one. Use the high level inputs, and connect the special nuetric cable to connect to the speaker outputs on your amplifier. It's very high impedance and uses no power - the amp doesn't even know it's there. Rel recommends this because this way the sub receives the same signal as your Speakers. You can connest 2 subs the same way, though I frankly don't think that would be the best use of your money. The Storm will preally pump it out.

Bdgregory,

Sorry for asking some silly questions. What are you referring to as "High Level Inputs" and are you referring to these inputs on your REL sub-woofer ? Also, does it mean you have two pairs of outputs on your Amplifier that allows you to connect one pair of outputs to speakers and another pair of outputs to Sub-woofer ? Do you mind simplifying this and explain me in a simple terms ? Please bear with an audiophile ignorant like me.

Thanks
Grakesh

Most subwoofers (I believe) have 2 input options - Hi level, and Low Level. Hi level inputs take signal from a Power amplifier, Low Level inputs take signal from the preamp. In the case of low level, it's always an RCA interconnect (and on the Rel they also have XLR Balanced). For high level inputs, you connect to your Power Amplifier's speaker output binding posts, and the oter end to the "high level input terminals on the Sub. For many subs, the high level input terminals are simply 5-way binding posts. The Rel uses a special connector - a Neutric Speakon connector.

My amp only has one set of binding posts (as most do) and I connect the Rel Cable to the same posts as my speakers. It's designed to be this way - and as I said, the amp hardly even knows it's there - electrically speaking. The other end of the Rel cable (is the subwoofer end) has a Neutric Speakon connector which plugs into the back of the Sub. Once connection is made, you need to set up the crossover and output level of the Sub. This is done by setting the controls on the Rel's amp panel and is described in detail in the Rel Manual. You can download the manual from the Rel website and read through their setup procedures - they're quite detailed and will also help explain the connections further.

hope that helps . . .