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Amplification for Whatmough S33s


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Hey everyone,

 

I've had a couple of old Rotel toroidal amps that I've been using for 15 years now and they've been fantastic, they were well reviewed at the time but that was 15 years ago, but I still enjoy them.

 

Previously I'd considered going down the Emotiva XPR path, but then there was a lot of problems with the XPR and it didn't sell well, so it was discontinued.. Then do I go the Emotiva XPA-5 Gen 3? Or do I look at an old Classe 5300...

 

I've recently acquired some Whatmough S33s (I've wanted to go from the P32 to the P32 Signatures for a while, so when I saw the S33s come up it wasn't that hard a sell) and now I'm trying to see what the consensus might be around amplification for these things might be..

 

I'm namely listening to SACDs and watching movies, hence me leaning towards 5 channel amps. I recently picked up a NAD T777v3 to use as a processor too.

 

Anyway, thoughts?

 

Thanks,

 

Berny

 

 

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Hi Berny, Congratulations on your Whatmough purchase and welcome to the Whatmough family!

 

I have a pair of 202i Leadlines, I use Redgum amps, a great synergy between the two, but as always, audition with your own ears...

 

Cheers

Bob

Edited by bvuka2013
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I have run an Elektra Theatron with my P28 mains, P7 Centre and P21's (now used as surrounds, were previously my mains) and am very happy with the combo. The Elektra's come up on here from time to time, people upgrade to the latest version. They are built in Melbourne.  There is a reasonable amount of info on this forum about them.

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I have used ME pre/power amps 14, 15, 24, or 25 / 850 combo with 201i leadline and 502i with a great results and a friend of mine who has P33i sig. (same as S33s as far as I know) driving them with ME 25/850 combo with a great result and he is very happy with them. If you can find these ME amps you won't go wrong.

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I use a Devialet Le 400 amp with a set of Whatmough P33 signatures.  I think they sound great but I may be the only person on this site using the combo. 

 

I don’t have any experience with multi channel amps.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Kinsella said:

Congrats on taking the leap on these great speakers Berny.  

Thanks mate.

 

You know if all this goes sideways I'm blaming you don't you! ? All jokes aside, thanks again, very much appreciate your kindness.

 

I'm working out cabling, and setting myself up for a proper A / B comparison between my old and the new speakers so I've not hooked them up yet. I ordered (and just had delivered today) the Fleetwood Mac SACD that we were listening to, so I'm sure you can guess how much I'm looking forward to a faithful reproduction.

 

There's going to be a lot of tuning and things that'll need to be done to get these right, I'll let you know how I go.

 

Berny

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19 minutes ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

Colin Whatmough favoured valve amps back in the day. I remember listening to some 502i speakers with Canary Audio monoblocks many years ago. 
One of the best sounds I’ve ever heard

I remember he also recommended me a valve amps for my 502i (can't remember the brand) when spoken to him over the phone.

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24 minutes ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

Colin Whatmough favoured valve amps back in the day. I remember listening to some 502i speakers with Canary Audio monoblocks many years ago. 
One of the best sounds I’ve ever heard

I still remember the demo he gave me back in 1999 in the Clayton warehouse. Canary Audio amps and his speakers with  vocals. I could really hear the people standing around the mic singing. Still one of the best sounds I have ever heard.
 

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11 minutes ago, misternavi said:

I still remember the demo he gave me back in 1999 in the Clayton warehouse. Canary Audio amps and his speakers with  vocals. I could really hear the people standing around the mic singing. Still one of the best sounds I have ever heard.
 

Yes. That was the place.

RIP Colin 

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Another time I listened to a pair of 201i leadline with Audio Research SP11 and AR power amp (can't remember the model) in 90s, and playing Famous Blue Rain Coat CD at Audio Excellence, they sounded sublime.

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17 hours ago, Kinsella said:

I’m interested to see where you land on amp selection.  The Audio Experts currently recommend Pass Labs and Hegel for these. 

I do have an ASR Emitter II sitting in a cupboard upstairs that might sound OK.....

 

I could hook it up for a day if you wanted to do a comparison... I hooked up my speakers last night and they sound nice, I just don't know what I'm missing at this point, what more do I get if I go down the path of another amplifier more than what I'm hearing now?

 

@thesnodger What do you think?

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I don’t know about the 502i’s but with the P33’s having 88dB sensitivity and a nominal 4Ohm load, I’d think you’d want a relatively high powered valve amp to drive them. Recommended minimum is 50w. Maybe an ARC amp would match well.

 

If I was looking to change my amplification, I think I’d be looking closely at Hegel amps.

 

 

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1 hour ago, jt301 said:

I don’t know about the 502i’s but with the P33’s having 88dB sensitivity and a nominal 4Ohm load, I’d think you’d want a relatively high powered valve amp to drive them. Recommended minimum is 50w. Maybe an ARC amp would match well.

 

If I was looking to change my amplification, I think I’d be looking closely at Hegel amps.

 

 

502i has 89dB sensitivity and a nominal 4 Ohms load

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On 11/05/2020 at 7:36 PM, Berny Stapleton said:

Anyway, thoughts?

I used an Elektra Audio 7ch Theatre power amp with a pair of P32’s and then acquired a Elektra Audio 2ch Reference and finally a HD Reference and that was a pretty good combination, at one stage I was comparing the Whatmough P33’s to the Paradigm S8’s, in the end I sold my entire P32, C7 and surrounds for a completely new Paradigm signature series speakers S8, C3, S2, I did however keep my 3 x whatmough Impulse 2 subwoofers.

 

I also used the whatmough speakers with a Rotel RB1080 2x200W amp and also a. Bel Canto 500S 2x250W amp, at the end of the day the Elektra Reference 2ch amps worked best for me.

 

JDH

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Hi Berny, Colin drove the S33s in the showroom with Moon amps & cardas cable’s there was a lot of synergy with that combo definitely worth checking out the sound blew me away at the time. 
 

The other cheaper option would be the ME850 as mentioned in the earlier post by Vinilink. 
This is what I was driving them with before I sold them to you. The ME/ S33s match up is a good one in fact there is quite a few SNA members running the ME850 Whatmough combination. 

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