Hi all, I'm just getting into the audiophile scene and need some help deciding what to do with my odd mix of speakers, DAC, and amps.

My first audiophile speaker purchase was a set of used Paradigm Active 20 version 2's. I loved the performance out of them and went ahead and purchased another used set with the thought of forming a fully active home theater system. Knowing that it's very hard to find the matching Paradigm Active center channel, I initially thought I could buy a third used set of Active 20's, but realized that they would very likely be unshielded and therefore not be able to be used with a television. I know at least with my old CRT that unshielded speakers distort the picture when too close to the television but is there another widely used television technology that doesn't require shielded speakers?

Anyways, I had so much trouble trying to buy a subwoofer on Audiogon because no one seemed to reply to emails that I bought a set of 4 speakers on ebay including the Paradigm Servo 15 ver. 1, 2 Paradigm LCR-450's, and 1 Paradigm CC-450.

So now I have this mix of Active and Passive speakers. I was thinking of using the two sets of Active 20's as front and rear channels, cc-450 for center channel, and 2 lcr-450's as rear surrounds. I was planning on buying an Outlaw 990 to use the XLR outputs for the Active 20's because their performance is significantly better using XLR cables than when using RCA cables out of a benchmark DAC-1 imho. XLR cables would also be a better option over long distances for the rear channels as well from what I've read.

So the problem is amping the center channel and two rear surrounds, and then volume matching the output from the XLR output to the Active 20's, and the RCA output to some sort of amplifier(s) to the passive speakers. Not to mention the Servo-15 is an active subwoofer that only has an RCA input.

I've already spent about $4000 on my setup so far, not including the option of getting the Outlaw 990. I'm looking for recommendations on how best to amplify my setup at a reasonable price. Options I've thought of include:

a) Buying a 990 and going really cheap and just using 2 old stereo receivers, one to potentially bi-amp my center channel cuz it's only one channel?? (have no clue what i'm doing here though, thought maybe the two channels could bi-amp the one center channel). Then one to amplify the rear surrounds

b) Buying a 990 and giving the LCR-450's to my dad and buying the $299 monoblock from Outlaw to amp the center channel and simplify the setup. I mean, I bought CC-450 for about $200 so $300 bucks on a monoblock feels like a lot, but I guess that's the audiophile world for you.

I really only want to spend about $1500, so the 990 and a single monoblock from Outlaw plus shipping would round out my budget. I've thought about buying the 990 and one of the old power amplifiers they're discontinuing like the 755, but $2148 is a little more than I wanted to spend though I'm willing to consider the option if people view other options as a big performance degradation.

Last but not least, is there any point in using my benchmark dac-1 with the 990? I need the bass management for the servo-15 because I don't have the paradigm x-30 crossover that traditionally accompanies it, but I've read the 990 converts the 7.1 analog inputs back to digital for bass management. From the Ultimate AV article, they weren't overly impressed with having to do this. I like the idea of going from 2-channel to 7.1 via dolby prologic IIx for ambience sake, but I'm wondering if this is rendering my DAC-1 redundant.

Thanks all for reading my long-winded and much thought over setup and appreciate any input into my odd mish-mash of a setup.

iamsmrt

The 990 and M200 will likely be ideal if all you need is a center channel amp. You can use a receiver for the rear surrounds until you decide to buy another stereo amp (or two monos) for them. But, you will have to fix the output level on the receiver and leave it alone using only the 990 volume.

You can't biamp a speaker unless the speaker is capable of being biamped: separate inputs for woofers and tweeters that are normally bridged so you can use one amp. "Passive" biamping involves using two amps for the woofers and tweeters (you remove the bridging jumpers, obviously), and letting the filters in the speakers sort out the highs from the lows (when bridged, one has a traditional speaker crossover). "Active" biamping involves driving the speakers directly, with filtering at line level before the amps. This is best left to people who know what they are doing: lots of low frequency signal sent to a tweeter will destroy it. Of course, depending on the speaker, it is possible that some can be triamped, or more -- the most I've seen are some expensive five-way designs (yes, with five sets of binding posts).

The benefits of passive biamping is that one can pick an amp of the appropriate power for the woofers and tweeters -- one generally needs more power for the woofers. Since stereo amps have two equal channels of amplification, this is generally not an option of you "vertically" biamp: that is use one stereo amp to biamp each speaker, but is an effective way of (a) doubling the power to each speaker, (b) offering some isolation between woofers and tweeters, though it is generally thought that inter-driver distortion is less of an issue than amp bandwidth (and making the argument for complex active instead of passive biamping). However, you can also biamp "horizontally": use one stereo amp for the woofers in both left and right speakers, and another stereo amp for the tweeters. This allows using power where you need it (generally the bass).

Alas, there's a glitch: speakers are generally designed to accomodate equal power to both woofer and tweeter sections, and because the tweeters need less power, there tends to be an attentuation network in the filter before the tweeter. So, in the end, you'll likely need the same power to the woofers and tweeters, unless you remove the filters and actively biamp. Some audiophiles will do this so that they can use a low-wattage Class A amp for their midrange/tweeters in a 2.5-way biampable speaker.

My Radio 520i are biampable, and, when bridged, present a 4 ohm load. It might make sense to passively vertically biamp them, if this load presented a problem to an amp, or if I wanted a bit more power, or use two smaller stereo amps instead of one big one. However, the kinds of amps that have trouble with a 4 ohm load tend to be cheap, and if one has gone to the trouble to purchase biampable speakers, one is usually not buying cheap amps.

Even if I had a biampable center speaker, I probably wouldn't bother.

Now, one thing you might be able to do, if you center channel amp is bridgable, is bridge the left and right outputs and parallel the inputs to turn a stereo amp into a somewhat more powerful mono amp. This depends on the amp.

Personally, I'd just get an M200 for your center channel.

As for balancing the sound level, the 990 will do this automatically, or you can by a $50 Radio Shack SPL meter and do it by hand and enter the trim values into the 990 via a configuration menu.

I think you're on the right track here, but I can toss in a few thoughts.

1) An M200 would be a very effective solution to driving a passive center channel speaker, and if you were ever to replace the CC450 with a used Studio/CC (which has a driver complement that is very well matched to the Active/20's) it would still be plenty of amp for the job (I use my Model 750 amp to drive my Studio/CC along with four surrounds and a pair of M200's to drive my Studio/60 mains, so I can reasonably vouch for the amp/speaker combination).

2) Instead of an additional pair of M200's, you might look at a decent used stereo amp to drive surround back channels. The Parasound HCA-800 that I used for a couple years cost me less than $150 off of Audiogon and served me well for surround back duty. As an interim measure, you could use an old receiver. You'll need to set the receiver's volume to a specific point and leave it that way, as Rene mentioned. I've done this before myself as a temporary measure while searching for a surround back amp solution and had it work pretty well.

As for balancing channel levels between the active speakers and any passive speakers in the mix, that is not a problem - between the 990's auto setup and the internal test tones (useful for manual setup with an SPL meter), it's no problem to get the channels all trimmed out, which is an essential step for any surround system.