A40 to A80

[George Hincapie]

Have any of you A80 owners upgraded from A40s? If so, how would you describe your initial impressions? Significant difference or more subtle?

TIA

[jimbob]

I have borrowed a friends A70's and they were definitely a step up. They did everything the A40's did but with more authority and in a quite addictively effortless way. It was definitely a case of getting a fair bit more of the NVA sound. I can only imagine A80's will be another big step up.

[jammy395]

I must concur with Jimbob.
I've A40s in the upstairs lounge and A70s in the lounge downstairs.
For serious listening I head down stairs - Same NVA signature as the A40s but more so !!
I would expect a similar improvement moving from A70s to the dual trans A80s.

[Fretless]

George - what about hanging onto the A40's and then using them for Bi-amping a set of Cubes with an additional pair of A80's ?

The Sky's the limit !!!

[MK1LN4E:)]

I've had the pleasure of A40's bi-amped with my A70's, pumped through some abbot's, absolutely fantastic!

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

To bi-amp you would have to insert a NVA passive pre and not rely on the DAC as pre. P50 and P90 have three sets of outs to cater for bi and tri amping.

[walterwhite]

I had an A60 stereo power amp that I was using for bi-amping before I got my second pair of A80's. Just out of curiosity I tried it as a stand alone amp and found that the A80's were, to my ears, a substantial upgrade. IMHO the A40 to A80 upgrade would be well worthwhile.

[terrybooth]

Depending on budget, I would advise going for the more powerful amp in the first instance bi-amping later on. I went ap50, a70s/P90 then a70s plus a80s then p90 to p90SA (I think).

The 'problem' such as it is, is that the character of the music does not change much in all of this - you just get more of it. So, I can listen to my AP10/Cubette system and enjoy the music and I can maybe think that it's perfectly satisfactory (which it is) but then I listen to the main system and the soundstage is bigger, there's more individual character to the different parts of the music, there's a more 'in the room' experience.

(Like what Jammy said.)

[George Hincapie]

So would bi-amping with four A80s be the optimum for the black box range?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

For use with a two way speaker, then yes, BUT remember what I said you will have to get a P90 or P50 to go with it.

If you had three way speakers you could go to 3 sets of A80, like Naim did with active Isobariks, but our is passive amping not active.