I am in the process of upgrading our home theater. First will be the receiver. I am leaning towards the T762, and am waiting to see the price drop when the T763 hits.
I took my wife shopping and she loved the sound of the Magnepan 1.6's enough to have them in our house. (She is a special woman) The problem we encountered was the salesman stating that due to the size of our room we would fry the maggies. He was pointing us towards seperates costing over $3500. Our total room size is 14 x 35, but the family room part makes up 14 x 16 with 9 foot ceilings. Our cheap yamaha (RX-V495) fills the room, but sound quality is just adequate.
On to the question, would a NAD T762 be enough to power the maggies in our room without frying them? (MMGs at first, unless I can get the wife to kick in some money - which is quite possible as she loved the $1700 maggies.)
Hawk
Posted on
Railbait:
I have a room larger than you and I drove a pair of Magnepan MMGs with a 752 for a week with absolutely no problem. In talking with the store manager of my local Maggie/NAD/Yamaha dealer, he told me that they 762 would drive the 1.6s just fine (he saw me salivating over a pair of 1.6s with the cherry finish). He also told me that he recommends the 762 even over the Yamaha RX-Z1 and RX-V1 for the Maggies. He carries both lines and said the 762 is better sound at half the price. He also told me no other Yamaha can even handle Maggies. After the 762, he would not recommend anything else that costs less than $4000. Although your salesman obviously got too excited by the prospect of a buyer and forget NAD's true power, the 762 has an IHF dynamic power rating of 300 wpc into the 4 ohm load of the Maggies. That is more than enough, IMO, for your size room. And believe me, you will not fry the Maggies!
I tried my MMGs with a half a dozen different amps and receivers, and the NAD is by far the best sound available for under $1.5K IMO.
Another thought has occured to me. If you get the 762 and decide later that you would like more power (after you have filled out your all Maggie HT), you can always add an NAD C270 power amp to drive the front channels. The C270 does 120wpc x 2 and it is meant to plug right into the 762 or 752. It does 340 wpc x 2 into 4 ohms. It is available for just a little over $400.
