Hello, just got my first set of Logans! Time for a couple upgrades though...

[soundacct]

Hi everyone, thanks for maintaining this forum.

Recently, I found a set of ML Aeons locally for $450, which I thought was a steal.

Wow! They sound magnificient...but they quickly pointed out that I'll be needing to do a few upgrades if I want to do them justice.

A quick consultation with my wallet suggests that I will be looking at "good bang for the buck" type upgrades, and cruising Audiogon / ebay / craigslist.

I have some decent gear, and some not so much:
- Plain ol' Monster RCA Cables
- Parts express type 10 gauge speaker wire, banana plugs, and spade connectors
- B&K Reference 20 preamp
- Sony ES TA-N55ES Solid State integrated amp
- Oppo CD / DVD Player
- VMPS Larger sub
- and of course, Martin Logan Aeon mains (replacing some Mirage M7si towers).

My preamp might be in the right league, maybe the sub, but that's probably it.

Here's the kicker: these days, I tend to use the computer as the music source - internal sound card, yuck. No USB DAC.

Would anybody be interested in suggesting where to start? I'm at a bit unprepared since I'd never imagined being able to acquire such speakers (I was saving for some Magnepan MMG's when these came up)

Anyhow, thanks in advance

 

[cembros]

Upgrade your amp and be done with it. You will really want to feed those speakers lots of power, they are very hungry. If you want to get creative and save a lot of dough go with a pro amp, crown xls-2000 is about $450 and will crank out more power than anything even close to that price. I use an XLS-2500 for my Theos and it sounds amazing. Your speaker wire and cables are fine, don't know much about your sub and preamp though.

 

[soundacct]

thanks, i've been eyeballing those crown amps for another project

If the stars allign right maybe I'll get a chance to sneak it home for a few days and try!


The system I have now has been cobbled together on a shoestring. It is certainly loud enough, but a little harsh, especially the computer when comparing the same music on cd vs lossless on the pc.

The preamp is probably my only other nice piece, and the sub is a monster with manners.


Hard to ignore that kind of power though. Plus I've been to plenty of small venue concerts that sounded great, and they all use pro amps

Food for thought

 

[cembros]

You have xlr outputs on your preamp so the crown is perfect for you. Double check the voltage output but the biggest issue in using pro amps is the pre outs not being able to properly drive the amp. Xlr has more output so you should be good to go.

 

[soundacct]

No xlr on the b&k unfortunately

 

[cembros]

oh I googled and I thought it did. Either way, you should be fine. I use rca from my Pioneer SC-05 and it works wonderfully.

 

[MPS]

Hi everyone, thanks for maintaining this forum.

Recently, I found a set of ML Aeons locally for $450, which I thought was a steal.

- Sony ES TA-N55ES Solid State integrated amp

Isn't Sony TA-N55ES a power amplifier not an intergated one? Sony-TA-N55ES
Anyway Sony ES Hifi line was quite nice and your amplifier is specified to loads down to 4 ohms, however how it handles the impedance like that of Aeon is hard to say.
As for reccommedation to use Crown amplifier instead, well I'm little bit sceptical based on my experience with Crown XTI line (two models tested), sound was grainy and didn't really open up. Crown XLS may of course be different story.

 

[soundacct]

Hmmm... perhaps you're right.

To me, an integrated amp is basically an amp with a volume control - as opposed to no volume control or just a gain screw in back. (i.e. a preamp isn't strictly necessary).

Then again, there is only 1 set of inputs (RCA) and you might say the gain screw just got moved to the front and a knob put on.

So perhaps you're right power amp is probably more accurate, but still I think of it as integrated due to the front volume control for for the years that I used it with no preamp at all. Though I realize you can plug any amp in directly, it's pretty hard to listen with no volume control.

As for quality, I find it competent. It's served me well and the price was right - it'll do for the time being at least. Also I have 2 sets of TA-n220 4 channel amps that are of the same era, so I could always turn the rig into a respectable little surround sound setup with however many channels as I want.

As for the impedance, about 30-40 hours of play time on the Aeons and it's still working, and not even getting warm (used to get decently warm to hot playing my Mirage M7si's). I guess time will tell. If it dies, I wont be heartbroken, I've gotten alot of hours on it.

 

[coolcobramatt]

Welcome to ML! I had some Aeon i's and liked them quite well. I ran them with the same Musical Fidelity A300 that I have on my Theos now. I may upgrade though simply to go to even more power. Nice start on your system and a great deal on the Aeons.