Thread: Harman Kardon HK 3480 / B&W Speakers 604

Originally Posted by chromis

Woodbe I think you just gave me a virtual gender change. The he is a she

oops. sorry about that

Yes I know I got sold a dud but in my own defense and not having a good understanding in regards to the technical side I did put some effort into the buy.

I went to about 8 or 9 shops around Perth including a few specialty shops. Listened to stacks of different systems that were in my price range.
I wanted a unit that could deal with surround sound but also listen to music.

I went into surroundsound and listened to this setup with the booster amp and then without and it sounded pretty much the same to my friend and I.
I went away and thought about it, looked the system up on the web, read hifi forum posts about people who had the same systems, read reviews which were all good and checked out the prices.

Went back to the shop with my own music (dance music with an insane bass) and it sounded incredible. Really loud...

Yes I know I stuffed up. If you say the booster amp is crap what should I look at?

A normal stereo amp wont deal with surround sound or will it?

Don't think of it as a stuff-up, it's a learning curve. Once you get it sorted, you should be right for years...

As far as the booster amp is concerned, it is probably a high-output power amplifier. That's what I use, and a good one definitely is not crap. See if you can find out what the shop was using (because you clearly enjoyed the sound of it) and also see if you can borrow it overnight or on the weekend. The shop should be receptive to this, as they stand the chance of selling it, and you are their unhappy customer they should be trying to please!

Definitely hear it in your system at home before you part with the cash, you don't want to throw good money after bad. If it doesn't fix the problem, time to drag the salesperson out to see if there is some other problem with your setup.

For surround sound you need a multichannel AV Receiver of some sort. It will be 5 or more channels. This is what I have, and the left and right stereo output goes through the booster amp (my power amp) the other channels are fed directly from the receiver. This way, you have the good stereo output and the surround sound in one package. Most AV receivers would do this, they have plugs on the back 'Pre-Out' that are used for this setup.

Hope that helps, go lean on the shop

woodbe.