Which Amp for B&W Matrix

[studioland]

Hi,

just bought B&W matrix serie, how do you amp those to get good results ?

[MASSIVE Master]

WHICH Matrix?

There's a lot of power requirement differences between 801's and 805's...

Bryston, Rotel (high current models), even something like a Hafler P3000 -- What's in the budget?

[DSD_Mastering]

B&W is voicing their speakers now for Classe' since they're the parent company.
If the budget doesn't allow.... take John's advice!

Regards,
Bruce

[tsvisser]

Matrix... just based on what I've seen - and the time frame / historical perspective, I've mostly seen them being used with Threshold, Krell KSA, and Conrad Johnson tube amps. They all sounded good.

[807Recordings]

I have or had the CS-2100 and tested countless other amplifiers on my speakers. Bryston, krell, etc you name it. It was the Classe that made me rethink and give up my Audio Research Tube amplifiers.

Control on difficult speakers was never a problem either including some B&W 803D. Over the Bryston it was just more of a full harmonic picture. The Krell was better at bass but nearly 3 times the price it should be.

[Bob Weston]

Always been happy with a Bryston 3B with my Matrix 805s.

(not what I use for mastering, though)

bob weston
chicago mastering

[Bob Yordan]

I have Dynamic Precision amp (Norweigan), it delivers enough current
to the Matrix 801, so that the low end transient does not get smeared.

B&W Matric 801 needs a good amp to be able to work at it's best.

All of the bigger b&w models needs matching amps, so the price tags
gets a bit high.

[studioland]

Oops sorry Matrix 804's

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Classé was the amplifier that was powering the pair I heard and I liked the sound.

Pass Labs would also be a good choice or Bryston.

As others have stated these speakers are very detailed and everything in your monitoring chain has to be the best in order to get the best out of them.

I heard a pair recently that were driven by a Classé amplifier but they had some piece of junk Yamaha preamp driving the Classé and I was not impressed with the sound. I brought in my Benchmark DAC-1 and WOW! what a difference.

Best of luck.....lots of high end used amplifiers on Audiogon in case you can't find any locally.

[klaukholm]

We use a krell for our 801's
could not be happier.

Consider biamping or a minimum of 150w

[MASSIVE Master]

Amplifier budget would be the next question here... You could use a $1,000 amp, or a $6,000 amp, or a $10,000 amp...

We can throw names around all day, or we can give you suggestions in your budget.

[studioland]

used gear in the 1 000, 2 000 range

[MASSIVE Master]

Here's a Bryston 4BST with 13 years left on the warranty for $1450...

AudiogoN ForSale: Bryston 4B ST

I loved the 4B on my Matrix 802's...

Didn't care for it on the Nautilus 802's for some reason though.

That said, it's a great amp for those speakers.

And you'll have $500 left for a Central Station (if you don't have a decent monitoring DA, you can do much worse than the ridiculously full-featured Central Station) or a Coleman or something to control them with.

(EDIT)

D'oh - Sale Pending -- Still, there's a lot to look through at Audiogon. There might be a dozen more - I didn't look that far.

(EDIT AGAIN)

Yep - Saw a silver 3BST there also for $1750.

Anyway, Brystons, Rotel (1080's and 1090's would work well) -- Heck , a *new* Rotel 1080 is only around $1,000.

[studioland]

Thanks alot !!!

[buschfsu]

Originally Posted by Bob Weston

Always been happy with a Bryston 3B with my Matrix 805s.

(not what I use for mastering, though)

bob weston
chicago mastering

old post but if you are around bob, what should i watch out for. this is my mastering setup and will be for a bit (from a benchmark DAC1). i have a krk active sub i could use with them - not really mastering quality but to check the lower cycles i may be able to work with it.

any tips would be great

[lu432]

Try these for subs, and they are not crazy expensive.


Servo subwoofers •Rythmik Audio Direct Servo subwoofers

[Bob Weston]

Originally Posted by buschfsu

old post but if you are around bob, what should i watch out for. this is my mastering setup and will be for a bit (from a benchmark DAC1). i have a krk active sub i could use with them - not really mastering quality but to check the lower cycles i may be able to work with it.

any tips would be great

If I were going to master with my matrix 805s, I'd get a pair of Bag End subs (Infrasub-18 Pro, or Infrasub-12 Pro). These are self powered and have a built-in crossover. So you'd feed the full range signal for each channel (definitely use stereo subs!) into the sub, and then feed the Hi-Pass output from the subs' built-in crossover to the Bryston feeding the 805.

I'd never use a mono sub.

bob weston

[buschfsu]

thanks bob, i will hunt those down. i will replace the 805s eventually

[Kaigen]

Bel Canto or any ice module amp is great for monitoring purpose. They are much cheaper compare to Analog amps, but sounds way better than most of the analog amp less than $10000. Barefoot uses ice module.

[buschfsu]

Ice? is that like class D? haven't heard of that