2. amps-preamps
  3. 150924-135683

Where do I start!?!

Greetings!
I recently moved and actually have a small 12'x13' listening area in my new house and wanted to fill it with amazing sounds.  I currently have a Denon AVR-4500H AV receiver hooked into a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RS6 speakers.  I lucked out and got the RS6's at a really good price about 10 years ago and they're easily the best speakers I've ever owned.  I used this setup for casually listening to lossless music from a central server and very much enjoyed it.  I made mention to my father a couple weeks ago that I would like to get a nice turntable and maybe upgrade my sound package a little and he tells me that he recently ran into a pair of Acoustat speakers that he recently fell in love with and bought that he had his older system in a warehouse collecting dust.  When I went to look at it I was amazed to find a pair of McIntosh MC1.2KW monoblocks with a pair of McIntosh XRT1K speakers and a Thorens TD309 turntable in the corner.  He said I could have them if I wanted them but I would need to find something to run the monoblocks (he kept his C1100 and MX160 setup).
My biggest question now is this:  What in the world do I do with these things!?  The speakers are MASSIVE (fortunately I have 10ft ceilings) and the monoblocks are like 150lbs each!  Is 12'x13' enough room for this setup?  I thought I had a list all laid out of what components I wanted to get and how I wanted to set everything up but I was not expecting anything close to this kind of setup and it's got me pretty overwhelmed with options.  I know I need a preamplifier for the turntable but where do I go with the monoblocks?  Can I just go with a preamplifier that has an XLR output (e.g. Pro-Ject Phono Box RS) directly into each monoblock or do I need to get an AV processor to handle that transition?  Out of fear for my sanity, I haven't even started looking at cables yet.  I'm sure that'll be fun too....
Thanks for reading and looking forward to reading the replies!
thomaswells02

Showing 1 response by eziggy

eziggy
137 posts
 
Why not try it out?  And see what you think you may be surprised.  I would recommend to wait to sell them.  You will lose a lot of money especially on the speakers.  You may be happy with it, and then you can tweak the room or system components accordingly later.

You definitely need to pair the amps with a similar level of preamp to maximize the performance.  I would try to get a McIntosh Preamp since that's the only thing other than the turntable that wouldn't be McIntosh.  System synergy is important.  McIntosh tube preamps tend to match well with SS amps.

Cables will be very important in this system.  Can you get cables from you father to try out?  The only way to really know what cables work well is to start somewhere and then see what you like or don't like.  I am pretty sure the 1.2KWs are Quad Balanced so theoretically balanced/XLR cables will work better, but if you have RCA it should work great as well.  Just a word of advice especially using RCAs, the 1.2KWs have enormous amount of power, so never touch the any of the interconnect cables when the amps are on.  You can blow the speaker with the simple "pop" sound that can occur.
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