Just joined the gang 7125

just purchased the 7125 , the sale was too good to pass.

First time going with seperates.

how would be a pioneer elite vsx-32 (as a pre) or should I stick with my 7 year old yamaha rxv-2500 as the pre for the 7125 and was thinking to upgrade to infinity classia 336 speakers or what other speakers would be good in the sub $800 range for the pair. primarily for HT use.

any advice greatly appericiated.

thanks.

Congrats on your 7125, I was very close to getting one of them at that killer price as well, but ended up splurging and getting the 7700 at its great sale price. Hope the wife doesn't notice the credit card statement.

Not sure I can give you a lot of acvice on your other questions as I'm not familiar with those models. Many reputable brand name AVR's work very well as pres, I have used both my Denon 2805 and currently my 3808ci and they work just fine and have all the bells and whistles. I am anxious to see the 978 Outlaw when it is introduced and may part with my Denons...

I would say if your pioneer is newer, it probably has better processing for movies than your yammy, so that probably would be a better choice. Randy

Thanks Randy for the comments. I have decided to go with the pioneer elite vsx-32 as the pre. Also I noticed that you have the Axiom speakers, how do you like them?, I am thinking to get the M50 V3 or M60 V3 as i have a decent sub, the M80 are currently out of my reach or I read a lot about the crystalaudio TX-T2SE floor standing speakers.

any body have experience with the crystalaudio speakers - http://www.crystalaudiovideo.com


Roger

I haven't heard to M50's, but on the Axiom forum there are a few members that have owned them and seem to have good feedback. The m60's and m80's sound very similar, with the 80's having a slight edge in the low end because of the larger cabinet. In regards to the highs/mid frequencies, they are also very similar. The 80's might have a little more detail in larger rooms, and they can handle lots of power with no issues. I've owned both through the years and do miss my m60's at times. I think you would like the m60's over the m50's, as some have mentioned they m50's have a bit of a more layed back sound, and the m60's have more detail and true to the recording your listening to..

Also, something like the m22 bookshelfs along with a sub, sound very similar to M60's with no sub. All of the Axiom speakers are very efficient and require little power to play very loud in most rooms.

Folks I am leaning towards the purchase of the Mirage OMD-15 speakers to run with the 7125. The Mirage are rated at 6 Ohms, do i need to do setup the 7125 at 6 ohms. The 7125 just came in yesterday. I will be opening it up over the weekend.

Is any body in the outlaw family have the mirage omd-15?, as on vanns.com i see 73 5 star reviews.

Thanks.

The 7125 will drive pretty much any speaker, I would not worry about the ohm rating as that varies across the frequency range and is not fixed. There is nothing to setup other than hooking it up to your receiver pre outs.

You are fine with the Mirages and the 7125. It is rated at 4 ohms and can easily handle somewhat less than that without question.

so finally pulled the trigger and ordered the mirage omd-15s , omd-c1 and the omd-5 rears. vanns.com was very good. Heard them at a friends's friend house, absolutely amazing. Even my 7 year old infinity referece 5 speakers have a new life in them when powered by the outlaw.

question , do i really need to order the super expensive RCA connects or my current "acoustic research" 4 feet RCA gold tipped are good enough from PREAMP to the outlaw.

now the task remains of selling all of my old equipment on ebay. If anybody interested for an spare system I have.

Yamaha Rx-v2500 AVR
2 Infinity RS-5 tower
1 Infinity Center Channel
1 HK-8390 5 CD changer - almost new (used may be 10 hours)

---------------
Outlaw 7125
Pioneer Elite VSX-32 (used as PRE)
Mirage OMD-15
MIrage OMD-C1
Mirage OMD-5
polk in cieling - for surround backs
polk DSW PRO subwoofer
sony PS3 bluray
Panny PT-AX200U projector

The cables you have should be fine.

thanks gonk.

how to Bi-wire a speaker from 7125, do you run two pair of speaker wire from one speaker out or from seperate outs?

7125 outs
--------------------------------
L....SL....SBL...C...SBR..SR....R
||...||.......................||.||
||...||.......................||.||
\\...//..........................\\.//
--------.............or........-------
speaker.......................speaker
--------.......................-------

... are there to preserve spacing when i submit.....


also is there truly any benefit of bi-wiring or true benefits will be see if you bi-amp only?

bit confused, I did read the article on
http://www.audioforums.com/forums/showthread.php?14401-Bi-wire-vs-Bi-amp

still confusing.

Gonk or any other experts on this forum, if you could please shed some simple answers.

about my mirage speakers :

Speaker Terminals: The OMD-15 uses high quality gold-plated bi-ampable binding posts located on the rear of the speaker. The terminals will accept a wide range of connector type including spade lugs, banana plugs or pin type connectors. The versatile speaker terminals allow you to connect the OMD-15 speaker in the traditional method or Bi-Wire or Bi-Amplification method.

currently i am just running one wire from left and right channels on the 7125 to each speaker.

Just curious if Bi-wire or Bi-ammping would make it any better, they sound phenomenal as it is.

thanks.

RCUBE.

---------------
Outlaw 7125
Pioneer Elite VSX-32 (used as PRE)
Mirage OMD-15
MIrage OMD-C1
Mirage OMD-5
polk in cieling - for surround backs
polk DSW PRO subwoofer
sony PS3 bluray
Panny PT-AX200U projector

I would not worry about Buywiring. Like you said enjoy.

I could be off base here, but if you have the speaker wire already, I would say its worth giving it biamping a try. The theoretical advantage is that you would have 125 wpc just for the base portion of the L&R OM-15s and a simpler load on each amp channel.

If you don't like it, its easy enough to switch back.

He is talking about Buywiring, not biamping. Even if he was attempting biamping, unless it is done correctly there is little to know benefit.

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/biamping.html

Sirquack: Not sure why you are griping about my reply.

1) RCube actually asked about both. "Just curious if Bi-wire or Bi-ammping would make it any better"
2) If you look at the diagram RCube posted, that is bi-amping not bi-wiring.
3) Both the description of the OMD-15 RCube provided and the OMD manual, both state that bi-amping is possible without speaker modification. The shorting strap as discussed in the manual does need to be removed, but this is trivial. Neither specifically state that an electronic cross-over is required. The manual does however waffle slightly and says talk to the retailer. Clearly, if an electronic cross-over is required then, yes, what I am suggesting would not work. Nor is the power beyond that recommended by Mirage.
4) Nothing that I posted is in disagreement with anything in the link you posted (please look at the footnote).

As for the benefits, they may be trivial or significant, depending upon factors not mentioned in your link like the efficiency of the speakers, the room size and volume that RCube typically listens to music at. So if he has the speaker wire, testing both layouts doesn't cost anything other than the time spent doing the wiring and comparing.

I would hesitate to connect two channels of the 7125 together at the output stage for any reason. Bi-wiring is just what it says. Two wires run from a single channel of the amp to the speaker terminal with the jumper strap still installed. This basically gets the gage of the wire larger but in reality does very little to improve your performance and just adds more connections to go bad.
If you want to bi-amp your speakers, you remove the jumper strap between the woofer and the tweeter sections and wire each of them to a separate channel on the amp. Beware that although the amp is likely to power the woofer section just fine, the tweeter will likely be grossly overpowered from the 7125. You also have to take into consideration the impedances of the two sections because if either one is very low you could be challenging the amp.

Remember that the input to the amp will have to be split between the SR/R and the SL/L channels with some sort of wye connector to get the same signal going to the upper and lower speaker sections. Otherwise you will have one speaker trying to perform two different spatial aspects in your system.

All the bi-amp arrangement is going to get you is more power available to the woofer section of your speakers. If you are running a subwoofer like most do these days, then the advantage rapidly disappears because the sub is provideing all the low end sound and the mains are just coasting along anyway. 125 watts of clean power to any speaker is going to be pretty freakin loud.

I suggest you connect the speakers straight up with the jumper strap installed and leave it like that for a while until you get used to how it sounds. Then if you change it around you will be able to discern any improvements.

Xenon:

Just to be clear, and contrary to your instructions, OMD recommends removing the shorting straps of the OMD-15 for both bi-wire and bw-amplification. See Page 3 of the manual for the written instructions and diagrams 7 and 8 respectively on page 32 which shows the shorting straps removed. Diagram 6a on page 31 shows the connections for a single wire system with the shorting straps.

By all means you should follow the manufacturers instructions, but electrically there is no difference if the shorting strap is installed or not, since both sets of wires are connected back at the amp to the same terminal points. Unless the shorting strap has a different resistance than the wire there is no real delta except more wire/bigger gage. The manual even says that. I would still listen to them straight up for awhile before I decided they needed some esoteric improvement which is dubious to hear anyway. The manual also steers you to the dealer to decide which type of equipment you should use for the bi-amp application as it likely knows that the separate impedances could challenge the amp.

If your speakers have a passive crossover, which most do, removing the strap is not true bi-amping. You have to have external crossovers as the article explains. 73, not sure why you said I was griping, can you sense that in my typing? The OP asked about bi-wiring (aka Buy wiring) which will result in no improvement, as X man mentioned your just changing where the signal is split. You mentioned bi-amping in your first sentence, sorry just tried to clarify the difference.

Removing the jumper bars or wires on speakers with internal crossovers can still allow for bi-amping. Specifically, it can allow for "passive bi-amping," which basically just allows for more power. The benefits are less than with "active bi-amping" (with external crossovers located before the amps). Basically all passive bi-amping is doing is providing more power. The speakers in question are 6 ohm and 91dB efficient, which means the 7125's output (which will be around 150+ watts with a 6 ohm load) is probably more than enough unless you are using the speaker in a truly huge space, making the benefits of passive bi-amping very, very negligible.

Biwiring is basically providing a larger gauge of wire. Some claim that separating the wiring for the high and low portions of the speaker reduces some transfer between the two, but I have my doubts about that.

First Xenon, I largely agree with you about bi-wiring. The only arguments that I have heard that favor bi-wiring beyond the wire gauge involve claims that certain frequencies are handled better by different types of wire (twisted vs solid etc). This is well beyond my level of hearing and I would make not claims there. However if one does drink that kook-aid then removing the shorting strap is part of the path to the promised land.

Second, I believe there could be merit in passive bi-amplification in some instances. As I stated, I don't know if that applies in RCubes case. I think we can agree that as long as RCube has unused amplifier channels, his cost for experimenting is largely minimal (possibly for wire and otherwise only for the time expended). And yes there could be an impedance issue (but I doubt it as the manual describes a 4 ohm minimum and does not specify a lower minimum for bi-amplification setups, which they would probably do if there there was an issue). Nonetheless, I agree that RCube should check with his dealer, or the manufacturer, before proceeding. But having done that, if there is no danger, then there is little reason not to try. Certainly he will increase the power available to the woofer and double the total overall. In my previous experience (admittedly with a much less efficient speaker than the OMD-15's, Dalhquist DQ-10s and one which did not involve bi-amping) increasing the power from 100 wpc to 205wpc made a significant difference in my fairly large room. If his room is small to medium, then perhaps this isn't necessary but RCube didn't provide that data. Nor is this as case of an untested setup as RCube described how "phenomenal" his system sounded. Consequently, I see no reason, not to try or why, given all of the money spent in audio chasing the last small percentages of improvement, that a little to no cost option should be automatically argued down.

Sorry Sirquack, but I do understand the difference between active bi-amplification with external electronic crossovers before the point of amplification and passive bi-amplification where two separate amps are fed the same signal but are presented with different circuit loads because they are handling different speakers. I have also read a fair amount of the stuff on the internet about this including the old posts by Soundhound on the benefits of multi-amping his fully active system. And in this case when I have my facts straight as I believe I did and do, and someone asks "if Bi-wire or Bi-ammping would make it any better", I take your response "He is talking about Buywiring, not biamping. Even if he was attempting biamping, unless it is done correctly there is little to know benefit." as griping.

RCube: What ever you do, I am glad you are enjoying your system.

I saw a few illustrations that might come in handy when describing one benefit to bi-amping. The images are on a page Copyright © James L. Tonne 2009 called “The Pulse-Width Modulator with an emphasis on the post-modulator lowpass filter” and found at this web address:

http://tonnesoftware.com/appnotes/pwm/pwmham.html

While his information is well beyond what is being discussed here, three of the images are pertinent.

In order to see the images in this post, right click on the link above and select 'open in new tab', come back to this page, refresh this page, and if there are X's where the images are supposed to be, right click on each X and select 'show picture'.

Image LowF:


Image HighF:


Image Fsum:


Simplistically . . . In both the high frequency and low frequency images, the voltage range is just shy of two volts. When the high and low frequencies are combined, the total voltage range effectively doubles to just shy of four volts. If the high and low frequencies were bi-amped, one could use two amplifiers where the total voltage range for each individual amplifier was three volts and still have plenty of headroom. If the combined signal were sent to a single amplifier, the amplifier would need to have a total voltage range of six volts in order to have the same percentage of overall headroom. If I double the output voltage into a simple resistance load, four times the power will be used. If reality were this simple, I could replace one 200 watt amplifier channel feeding a passive two-way loudspeaker with a two-way pre-amplifier crossover and two 50-watt amplifier channels, each channel appropriately driving either a tweeter or a woofer.

In most music that has a mix of instruments, the amplitude of the higher frequencies by themselves is less than the amplitude of the lower frequencies by themselves, so sums of equal-amplitude high and low frequencies are not usually found. This means the example above shows an exaggerated disparity between pre- and post- amplifier crossover use. Then again, the inefficiencies of an after-amplifier passive crossover network makes the example a little less far-fetched.

Some powered two-way loudspeakers that use an active crossover will have internal amplification that provides about 50% more available power for the woofer than for the tweeter.

We are heading down the "Clever Little Clocks" path here. I agree that the experimental connection of bi-amping could be tried but I don't believe it will make a "phenomenal" system sound better. Why negate what the Mirage folks have built as a system. Why not just connect something like a Bose 901 to one channel and a Heil AMT to the other side and do away with the crossovers altogether. The Bose will handle all the stuff above 80 hz up to around 4000 hz and the Heil will carry the load from there. Remember that the design folks had specific ideas in mind when they designed the crossovers for the size box containing the drivers.

Again, I would spend some time listening to the system as is and if I was not satisfied or a bit curious I would try the bi-amping connection. Like 73 said it is a cheap experiment and it might give a sonic advantage. Definitely verify the specs with the dealer or with Mirage themselves (get it in writing if you can).

Thanks to all that have responded especially, Sirquack, 73Bruin, Xenonman and Gonk. reading all your comments, I have just wired my speakers using a single pair (no bi-wire/buywire or bi-amp), as Xenonman stated, as I am using a decent enough sub I really do not see a need to bi-amp my speakers and if I set my speakers as small in the pioneer AVR configuration most of the bass heavy lifting is done by the sub (now that is another discussion whether to set the mirage omd-15s as small or large in the configuration) also I am using 12 AWG speaker wire and it is a bitch to move the 7125 from the built in wall shelf. My room size is 12x20 in my basement, I have created a dedicated HT area. Will post pics soon.

In any case the 7125 shows no signs of sweat running the mirage omd-15s, and I would know more in a couple of days once I am really able to crank it up, as currently i am in the 100 hours of the recommended break-in period.

Thanks again, All have a great Memorial Day weekend.

RCUBE, most processors need the mains to be in the "small" mode in order to activate the bass management system. With the mains in large you may not get a signal to your sub. Some let you choose to have both signals at the same time. If you get both signals you will likely have more bass than you want (or not). Since you have the sub and it will do the heavy lifting, you can save headroom on the 7125 for the mains by setting them to small. Looking forward to your pix.

Thought I'd pose my question here rather than start a new thread.

I just ordered the 7125, the sale price was too good to pass up. I'll be running Paradigm Monitor speakers for the front sound stage. I've read that the 7125 is very neutral with slightly relaxed highs. My pre-pro will be the Onkyo 876 receiver, which is a little forward. I'm expecting a little less of the Onkyo forward sound and more dynamics from a dedicated amp. Is that about right, or any comments on my set up?

I know that this part of the forum doesn't get as much action, why don't we all change that. Outlaw IS an amp company first, after all...

Hey Sharkey, your assumption sums it just about correct.

The 7125 will be neutral AND more detailed. I myself have an Onkyo 906 and I am running it as a pre/pro to my 7500. I noticed detail from the Outlaw that was not present even on the 906. The speed and reaction time of the amp is much greater than an AVR. The damping factor alone controls the speaker drivers with speed and precision. Surround sound detail improved as well. Once you go to an Outlaw amp you will be saying goodbye for life to AVR power.

Excellent move on the 7125. Please let us know your thoughts when you get it.

Good to hear from another using an Onkyo AVR as a pre-pro. I was wondering about the increase in things like the damping factor, S/N ratio and THD%. I won't have to wait too long as I got the confirmation email today.

Hi all
I have a 7125 and a Onkyo Receiver, running a Polk audio LSIc and LSI9 speakers.Boy, your in for a treat.Music is full.
Blu-rays are breath taking. Enjoy your purchase, I love the 7125 amp.

I ordered the 7125 on the 29th of March, but due to somewhat of a backlog coupled with a long weekend, my amp was received by Fedex only yesterday. To double my trouble, I'm out of town on work and won't be able to try it out until the 28th of April. The suspense is killing me!

April 28 is an eternity away. The wait will be worth it at the end once you plug it in.

I finally got to try out the 7125 in my system. I'm impressed. The first thing I noticed over using the amp section of the Onkyo TX SR876 was the improvement in bass. More of it, and tighter, or more accurate when coming from the fronts. The overall impression is cleaner too. The Onkyo was bloated by comparison.

The soundstage improved as well with the speakers disappearing more. There is more detail or texture as well. I thought the Onkyo was pretty good, but I'm at a new level now. The amp's only got 10 - 15 hours on it so it may improve some yet. In about a year I'll look to get a pre-pro and by then the 978 will be on the short list.

"The Onkyo was bloated by comparison."

That is what I thought on the 7500 over my Onkyo 906. The soundstage on an amp is definitely improved with speaker disappearance. The dynamic power must be a whole lot better on the 7125 over the 876.

its about a year since I have had the 7125, and it does improve with age, the soundstage is phenomenal, also I chnaged my speakers, returned the Mirage omd's and got the KEF's. Just played the eagles "hotel california" and it felt as if I am right there in front row of a concert. so far so good, the 7125 does not break a sweat at any load levels. Also purchased the outlaw LFM-1+ sub, amazing as well. Just for kicks, a couple of months ago, I had conected my speakers directly to my pioneer elite vsx-32, there is no comparison, the sound from 7125 is so much more fuller and richer.

Glad to hear you are enjoyong your nice 7125. Yes you are correct RCUBE in that the amp smoothens out with age. Good buy on the sub as well. No receiver can match an amplifier. Anything above $800 or so on an AVR is overspending methinks. Your power supply is more important than you will ever know. Two to Four thousand dollar AVRs? Today's luxury...tomorrows garbage or a pre-pro. Quality performance will always outlast bells and whistles.

A little update.

When I ordered the 7125 I was out of town on work and came home on a weekend to set it up, but couldn't get the 12v trigger to work. Left it until I was to come home again.

Still couldn't get it to work, so I phoned tech support and got it sorted out. It turns out the power button needs to be in the on position and then I think I plugged in the 12v trigger while energized. Then when I turned off the pre the amp followed suit and vise versa.

On the performance side it's been a good upgrade on the amp section of the Onkyo 876. Like I said earlier the soundstage was improved and the bass performance cleaned up. But recently for the first time I listened to music in a 5.1 and 7.1 configuration. Wow. Even just music recorded in old school 2.0. Let the Onkyo process it into Dolby or THX and it's just better all around. The only thing I want to eventually add to my theater system is Audyssey XT32 down the road.

Glad you like your amp. The detail it pushes out is definitely cleaner and faster than an AVR. Remember one thing, an AVR's power rating is NOT measured with "all channels driven".