Miltiple amps for stereo Matrix 801's

If you're going with the W4S DAC, why not buy the amps also? Why spend more for Bryston? The ST500 on my N802's easily surpasses the Classe amps I had in the past. I suspect the Bryston would fare no better.

I thought about a pro amp for the bass, a QSC or MC2. The Powerpac 300 really isn't much power for the woofer, when you consider good powered subs typically have 1K Watt amps.

The 7B-SST2 would be plenty of power @ 600W, maybe I'll do that. Would that be as good as trying to bi-amp them?

@Rhljazz,

Bryston has been around a long time and has a stellar reputation. That's really the only reason.

I've been looking at ICE amps and other class D amps. I just don't trust them. Bryston is a known commodity.

Specs don't appear to be available for the output impedance of the W4S DAC2.

If you biamp, regarding the cable capacitance issue I mentioned I would feel pretty confident that you'll be ok if the length of each interconnect is say 10 feet or less. Just avoid interconnects that have high capacitance, more than say 50 picofarads per foot (pf/ft).

However, the other impedance-related issue I mentioned may be a more significant concern. The Bryston amps have an input impedance at their balanced inputs of 20K ohms. Which means that if you were to connect each channel to two amps via y-adapters, the DAC2 outputs would see a load of 10K ohms. That is low enough to be a concern, and I would not want to opt for that approach without first somehow verifying that the DAC2's output impedance is less than 1K, and preferably well under 1K, at all frequencies.

Regards,
-- Al

I can ask W4S about this if I decide to go in that direction. Thanks for the help and I have a better idea now of my options.