Looking to upgrade my Polk RTi A7 towers

Nice! Well there you go...

 

To connect my integrated to my new amp via the integrated's pre-out, do I need any specific RCA interconnect? Or just any standard RCA? Shielded at least, right?

Thanks.

 

Any RCA will do, even the black generic ones that come with the amp. Of course, if you get better RCA's, it's not going to hurt, for sure.

 

I'm partial to Audioquest, but any well made cable will do for now. Blue Jeans cables are a safe bet for not a lot of money

 

I wasn't aware it came with cables; their website doesn't say what comes in the box, or I can't find that info.

 

some do some don't

 

There are no RCA’s with the amp. Only the manual and power cable. Search for Worlds Best Cables on Amazon, they are made using quality cable and connectors for decent money.

 

Having a large power amp does make a difference. A big difference.

Back in the early days of my audio room, I had a pair of $200/ea. Polk Monitor 70's running in parallel with a pair of Klipsch WF-35's.

Both are tower speakers and were running off a Peachtree Nova, which can deliver about 80-Watts into a 6-Ohm load.

I bought a 1st generation of an Emotiva 250-Watt class A/B power amp for my front mains.

I continued to use the Peachtree unit as the system DAC, source selector and class A preamp. I completely ignored the power amp section of the Nova, in favor of external power amps.

Later, I upgraded to many speakers for my front mains, including the RTiA9's.

The difference in having a lot of power was apparent, even with the original Polk Monitor 70's.

One thing that I will comment on is that I don't care for overly bright treble on a y speakers. Detailed HF yes, but overly bright no.

I never noticed the RTiA9's as being overly bright and I use my front mains equally for HT and stereo and I felt they did an equally fine job on both.

I still use my original Emotiva XPA-2 power amplifier with the Polk LSiM707's and I remain completely satisfied with the combination.

I think you will be pleased at how your RTiA7's will sound with better and more powerful amplification.

With both my RTiA9's and the LSiM707's, I still use a large 15" passive commercial horn loaded sub, driven by a Crown XTi-2000 power amplifier that is running in bridged mono and delivers 1,600-Watts to the sub.

The important thing is to not overlap the sub with the lower frequencies of the woofers on your RTIA7's.

Otherwise, you will end up with bloated, boomy bass.

Keep your sub where it needs to be at 40-Hz. and below.

Use your sub as it was designed to be used, as a sub!

 

Thank you!

 

I agree with everything so far. If you haven't found the A7's too bright so far you'll find the bottom end should fill in nicely with the added power. My suggestion would be while you listen try to pick out what the shortcomings are that annoy you, if any. Then later if you decide to upgrade speakers you can really describe what you feel is missing. As stated these are designed as home theater speakers, that doesn't mean they are bad for music but may lack nuances desired for 2 channel. I have a 5 channel system with this line, my biggest speaker being the A7, I am content listening to music on it. I think you'll be content for a while even if you decide to upgrade the speakers.

 

So now that I'm getting the Parasound 2250 v.2 stereo amp to pair with my Marantz PM-8005 integrated amp, I started to ask myself if I can do better than the Marantz integrated. So is an integrated the best to pair with a stereo amp, or should I be looking at a preamplifier or a better integrated and sell the Marantz, or am I good as is for now? Thanks all.

 

Both. You are good for now, but a good preamp in the future is a good move

 

I don't like going against the majority here, but I don't believe you're going to notice a significant improvement with the new amp. And why do you need more bass from the Polks when you have the SVS sub? Just adjust the sub to get the bass you desire.

I have a pair of NHT SuperZero 2.1 speakers that have severely limited bass. My SB-3000 fills in the bottom end to a point I don't miss any bass.

 

I never said I was looking for more bass out of the Polks. I wasn't satisfied with my speakers, so was looking to move on from them until a few folks here pointed out that my speakers are fine, it's the WPC that is making them underperform. My integrated amp is only pushing out 70 WPC to speakers that can handle up to 300 WPC. So the Parasound amp is going to give me 275 WPC at 8 ohms. So yes I believe I will have a "significant improvement" by pushing 205 more WPC to my speakers.

 

I apologize then. I read you were looking for a warmer sound.

And the thread went from new speakers to a new amp. According to @Benzion, your Polk's bass may improve to a point where you may not need the sub. I don't agree at all. IMO, you'll be able to play your Polks louder without straining the amp, but the overall sound isn't going to change much. As you've already spent your money, I'm happy to be wrong.

 

I was part of a group of people who believe that the speakers need more power to show what they're capable of. Bass wasn't the primary objective, but rather one of the by-products and an added benefit of more power. A few people suggested it, not just me, I suggested the particular amp. As to whether an amp makes speakers sound better - I'm a firm believer that it does. My PSB's sound better/fuller with an 80 Watt SS amp than with a 35 Watt PrimaLuna Four, sub or not. In fact, I'm thinking of maybe switching tubes from EL-34 to KT-88 to see if I can give the amp some more oomph.

Besides, I did suggest to the OP to try the amp first, and if he doesn't like the result - he may return it, or revisit the idea of new speakers at a later time, if he likes the amp and wants to keep it.

 

Looks like I put my reply inside the quote marks lol.

And I really appreciate the input!!!! I'll be sure to let you know how I it all turns out .

 

Even though late to replying I was agreeing with a new amp, not only will he get more/better bass it will sound fuller throughout. At least that was my experience with my RTI-A7's. Although he may not be happy and still wish for a better/different speaker. The A7's aren't a bad speaker but yes there are better speakers out there.

You'll be fine using the pre-outs on the Marantz, down the road you may want to look at an actual preamp.

I'm hoping you are happy and we haven't lead you astray.

 

Nah you all are great!

 

I use a pair of Harbeth C7ES-3 speakers which I run with a 150 watt integrated amp. The web site says they can be used with as little as 25 watts so the other day I hooked up a 30 watt Cairn amp just for the heck of it. Both amps solid state. I believe with the smaller amp I lost some clarity, and the bass became less defined. That said, the overall character of the speakers was unchanged. One guys experience.

 

There really is a difference with a more powerful amp.

My Peachtree Nova had plenty of power. I bought a remote speaker/amp A/B switch box so that I could compare the Polk Monitor 70's against the Klipsch WF-35's, which were $1,500/pr. speakers which I bought on closeout for $600. This is against $400 for the Polk's.

I wasn't really expecting too much out of the Polks when I bought them. They were very inexpensive and the most I could hope for was an all right sounding speaker that I could live with, nothing more.

But the Monitor 70's did surprise me. They sounded better and could play to a much louder SPL than I would ever have expected that they could.

In pushing and comparing these speakers, I was also pushing the amp. The amp did have a fair amount of power but I thought that I might be pushing it into clipping.

The Emotiva XPA-2 was on sale for $690 at the time. I figured that would be more than enough power than I would ever need to drive what ever speakers I want to hook up to it.

I had discovered that both the Polk's and the Klipsch towers sounded best when they were playing together, connected in parallel. The XPA-2 is a high current amp and is rated at 400-Watts into a 4-Ohm load.

The amp paired wonderfully eith these speakers. The first thing I noticed was how much larger and fuller sounding they sounded with the Emotiva power amp, than the Peachtree. It was a very noticable improvement.

In fact, I had a motel guest come into my office through the back door. Since the equipment is on the TV rack, which faces into the center of the room and is next to the back office door. Without turning around and looking specifically at the equipment rack, you would not know that another amplifier had been added to the system.

The motel guest paused and said to me that the stereo sounds better somehow than before.

This shows how apparent, changing to the XPA-2 really was. I myself was expecting more undistorted power. I did not expect the speakers to sound bigger and better.

This definitely made a believer out of me.

It is a general consensus among RTi series tower owners, that these speakers do need a lot of power to sound their best.

I agree with this. The same thing holds true, even more so with the LSiM towers.

Even though the RTi's play low by themselves and the same thing goes for the LSiM's, having a sub in the system, opens up the towers a good bit, over just the towers by themselves.

 

To the OP. Your Marantz is a perfectly good integrated for you to use as a preamp. With speakers like your RTiA7's, you would have diminishing returns buying a dedicated preamplifier or a better integrated. Save your money!

 

My experience was different. As I've said earlier in this thread, while I had my Wharfedale Diamond 10.7 towers driven by Cambridge Azur 851A integrated - no slouch at 120 WPC, I was having doubts about the speakers, thinking I might need an upgrade. All that changed when the Azur was replaced with the Parasound 2250. Now these same Whardfedales are my favorite speakers that I would choose to keep even if I had to give up all the others I own: Zu, PSB, and Klipsch. So I'm a firm believer an amp does make a difference in how speakers sound - it doesn't change their sound signature, but a good amp will open up more of their potential, i.e it will allow them to show their capabilities. They may be way better then they lead on. And if not - he can always change them later.

 

I'm already looking down that road. Very curious what kind of preamp would outperform my current integrated as a pre.