Using Professional Amps On Home Theater Speakers

If your budget for the amps is $10K, why not get two Krell TAS amps and have $3-4K left over?

Also, there was a used Theta Dreadnaught at 5 X 200 watts for sale earlier this week. These aren't that great for 2-channel (which you don't care about anyway), but getting two of those dreadnaughts should put you out about $5,000 total for 10 channels at 200 watts into 8 ohms each.

Having a son who is into DJing I have a little (tiny) bit of experience with the types of amps you are referring to. They do fine for their intended purpose, but they are usually "loud" - not just from the fans. They seem to have a greater tendency toward buzzing, humming, etc. . . But those could all be grounding issues. But that would be one of my concerns.

But you could certainly get a stack rack for a bunch of those amps and have them all take up just a few square feet of space. I think most of the current "professional" amps of today are class D and have gotten surprising cheap (which tells us all alot about the "real" value of most class D amps and what it really costs to build them!).

One thing you will need to address with these amps is the types of speaker connectors offered. Many professional amps only offer 1/4" or neutric speaker connections and many also just accept balanced inputs. Both do have real work-arounds, but something to keep in mind. Go to your local Guitar Center and talk to some of the guys there for more experienced input on this.

I've not listened to the Kappas and certainly don't know the real power or current they require to perform properly.

Also, I do understand you are just looking for HT sound, not top quality two channel performance.

Normally, I would not recommend a digital amp as I don't think they are very good with traditional driver speakers with regards to two-channel performance (I have never heard a Class D amp I was impressed with for this type of speaker and I have heard many and owned several). For the record, I think Class D amps are best on ribbon and planar speakers - but that's it.

But in your case, and since you don't seem to care that much about the quality, perhaps you need to lean in this direction. Though I have to warn you that my Bel Canto Ref. 1000s (1000 watts at 4 ohms per channel) were not powerful enough to properly drive my Thiel CS 6s while at the same time, my Mark Levinson 334 at 250 watts at 4 ohms did not have any problems in my sized room driving the same speakers.

What amps do other users of these speakers use to drive them? Are these speakers really designed to address that volume of space?

I know when my son DJs and he needs to cover a larger space/volume, he ends up having to use many subs (sometimes 6-8 total dual driver or sometimes quad driver sub/low bass units and is running thousands of watts just on the subs) just to properly pressurize the large room.

Why not go to Guitar Center and talk to the guys. You can rent a DJ rig for a weekend (excluding the speakers) or at least the necessary amps. Guitar Center lets their employees rent stuff privately, so you can probably get away for a few hundred dollars if you are just talking about the amps and the cables. It will give you an idea of what the sound will be like.

I'd hate to see your power bill.

I don't dispute the quality of the performance of these speakers, as you seem to be quite enthralled by them.

Perhaps you could consider using these for your fronts and finding alternative speakers for your sides and rears. These alternate speakers are really more support based anyway and perhaps the Kappa's are being "wasted" on the intended purpose and location in some regards?

I got into HT for a while, ended up with 5 Wilson W/P 5.1s, but in the end, I didn't think the rear ones were really being put to good use - especially more so since I am not a movie guy.

Just a thought and it sounds like it may address some of you issues between amplification, speakers, and room fill. Part of me thinks that you are being forced into sub quality amps in keeping your speakers and based on the budget, and if this is the case, I suspect you will be disappointed after spending the money and not getting what you want.

Again, I would start by going to Guitar Center and renting the amps for a weekend, tell them how much power you need - if its 2000+ watts per channel, they'll have it. It will end up being the cheapest way for you to determine if you can go "pro level" amps.