Added a Cinema Sunfire Amp to my system.

[soloracer951]

I currently have the following equipment in my home theatre:

Denon AVR 5800
ML Quest Z's
ML Logos
2 Pairs of ML Scripts
SVS 16-46 PC-Plus powered Subwoofer

I was running the entire system with the Denon AVR 5800 and was reasonably pleased with the sound. The only complaint was that the midrange could sometimes be harsh sounding on music vocals. So I went and purchased a Sunfire Cinema Grand amplifier. I set it up with the current output (no biamping) and noticed the warmer sound that I was hoping for. Dynamically though the sound didn't appear to change much. What I mean is that aside from the warming up of the sound I really didn't see much improvement with the new amplifier.

A week or so later I watched the movie "The Island" and thought it was great. At that time I thought it had the best soundtrack of any movie I had seen to date. I liked it so much that I bought the movie. I raved to my friends about how good the soundtrack was.

The next weekend I rented a couple of movies and after the first one was done I thought "wow, this movie has a good soundtrack. I may have to get this one too". I put on the second movie and halfway through it I found myself thinking it also had a good soundtrack. It was at that moment that I had an epiphany and I realized that all the movies I was watching probably would have sounded "normal" without the Sunfire Amplifier and that although I didn't really notice the improved dynamics when I first installed the amplifier it was showing itself in the movies I watched.

Needless to say I am really pleased with the amplifier and would recommend it to others. I was considering biamping with it but didn't want to replace the M1.4S cables I'm using now. So I'm considering using two of the spare channels on my Cinema Grand to power my ReQuests in another room. The Denon amp has the ability to run two systems in different rooms at the same time (multi zone).

Just thought I would share my experiences.

 

[Joey_V]

Glad to hear about your new addition! I am very excited for you!

If you had the ability to just purely go 2 channel and A/B the two - paying attention to imaging, balance, bass, and overall coherency... I'm sure you'll pick up even more of the differences.

Glad you like it!

I've been wondering how those Sufire amps sound, they look "tank-like" with regards to construction.

 

[tonyc]

You have been bitten soloracer! Just as I was twenty three years ago when I innocently added an ADCOM GFA 555 to my Carver receiver and discovered the joy (agony?) of separates. All these years later and still all my disposable income goes to audio toys! Good luckand enjoy!

 

[JonFo]

Congrats on the new Sunfire. They are indeed wonderful with ML‘s.

Do play around with bi-amping, since you have a spare set of channels. Don’t sweat the cable for the woofer section. Any decent large gauge cable will do.
That should add a bit more ‘clarity’ in your ‘quest’ for the perfect soundstage

 

[twich54]

Ace, You have experienced what we refer to as, "there's no turning back now" feeling. Sure there are some decent "receivers" out there, but the proper integration and flexability that seperates offer can't be denied. Besides I believe part of the reason the multi-channel receiver is used (outside of it's processing/price ratio) is that when in the "HT" / 5.1 mode your brain is digesting video as well as audio. Now once you seriouslly want to "listen" to music that's when the majority of receivers sound pretty bad.