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HT amp for music- please help

The decorator is coming and my wife has asked me to pair things down. I need to buy a 5 channel amp that will take on both 2 channel and movies.

My musical tastes run across the entire spectrum except electronica. Vocals, jazz, blues, country, folk-
I mean Dylan to Puchini

My current and steady amp is a Muse 160 which I have had in my system since buying it new. What can slip in as a replacement that wont leave me flat. Movies are really secondary as it all sounds pretty good to me, but music is what I spend most of my time with.

I am not going to drop a ton on an amp as I don't think it's needed. The Muse has been great and I simply want something that I can enjoy at least as much.

Parasound, Theta, ATI all come to mind.

Would someone please throw their thoughts into the ring- As an avid AG participant, I will not get to listen before buying so I want to be able to make the best possible decision based on this limitation.

Emotiva keeps popping up and I know the haters abound but it looks like a well build product and for a grand...

My mains are AP Tempo 3 rated at 4ohm - not sure about their efficiency- I would guess around 89/90

Suffice to say that I simply want the amp to sound good. Not looking for a lot of flowery descriptions

Thanks in advance for everyones input
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Showing 1 response by jmcgrogan2

jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
Does it have to be a 5 channel amp? In my experiences, if you value music first, as you say, and you are happy with your Muse 160 amp, I'd just go looking for a used 3 channel amp to add to that for HT purposes. Just look for a nice little used Acurus 200X3 to handle the center and rear channels.

I have heard of those that like the Theta Dreadnaught, and to be fair, I have not had a chance to hear one. However, as someone who has always been a music first type, I never found a 5 channel amp that I could live with for two channel audio, and I have owned 5 channel amps from Classe, Proceed, and Krell.
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