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Sunfire amp and Kappa 9 or Kappa 8s - opinions

seifreit

seifreit

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
Quick question. I have an opportunity to pick up a Sunfire S300 amp this weekend. Anyone run one of these with Kappa 9s as the sole amp or in combination as a bi-amp setup. How about with Kappa 8s?
 
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"300 watts/ch into 8 Ohms, 600 watts/ch into 4 Ohms, 1200 watts/ch into 2 Ohms, 2400 watts/ch into 1 Ohm" I've never heard one but those specs suggest that the Sunfire would be a great choice...
 
Can’t speak for the Infinities, but my Signature 600 two never breaks a sweat driving my Polk SDA SRS’s rated for 1000 wpc!
 
SDA SRS 1.2 said:
Can’t speak for the Infinities, but my Signature 600 two never breaks a sweat driving my Polk SDA SRS’s rated for 1000 wpc!
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The Infinities (in particular the Kappa 9) are known to drop to very low (like 1Ω) impedances at certain frequencies. Most amps need not apply.
 
Sunfires will drive kappa 9 just fine, with 0 effort, long as everythings still in spec.



IIRC, Bob claimed (and I think it was tested) stability to 1/2 an ohm with sunfire, and that he'd dead-shorted them with no problem at all, other then the protection circuit kicking in (as in shorted them with a screwdriver across the terminals)

I can't speak for any of the 'modern' sunfire amps.

Someday, I hope to find a signature 600, (or two) simply fantastic amplifiers.
 
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Please let us know how it goes. Seems like it could be a great candidate to add to the info short list. Weren't these Sunfire amps said to great companions to Magnepans? Anybody heard that?
 
seifreit said:
Anyone run one of these with Kappa 9s as the sole amp or in combination as a bi-amp setup.
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Not myself personally no,but I have a close friend that did so for a good many years.
He only stopped using his 300x2 when he picked up a pair of Bryston 7BST mono-blocks.
And TBH I kinda think he regrets selling off the Sunfire after getting the Bryston's.
But that's one of those "water under the bridge" sorta situations.

But yeah these are probably one of the best amps for driving speakers like K9's.
His 300x2 did about as good as any amp would ever do,and he never really had any problems with his.
So yeah from my POV I'd say it's a damn good choice for this sorta use.
swechsler said:
Almost as if that amp was designed to run those speakers.
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That is true in more ways that most are aware of.

The Sunfire signature amps have two sets of speaker outputs.
One set of speaker outputs are voiced for a solid state sound signature.
The other set of speaker outputs are voiced for a tube like sound signature.
So one can bi-wire the K9's using the SS voiced outputs for the woofers and the tube voiced outputs for the rest of the drivers.
jazzmans said:
Sunfires will drive kappa 9 just fine, with 0 effort, long as everythings still in spec.

IIRC, Bob claimed (and I think it was tested) stability to 1/2 an ohm with sunfire, and that he'd dead-shorted them with no problem at all, other then the protection circuit kicking in (as in shorted them with a screwdriver across the terminals)

I can't speak for any of the 'modern' sunfire amps.

Someday, I hope to find a signature 600, (or two) simply fantastic amplifiers.
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QFT ^^^^ ...
When he labeled these amps "load invariant",,,he meant it...
seifreit said:
Sounds like this combo has flown under the radar
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I dunno 'bout that,I've pointed out how good a combo it is here in this forum plenty of times.
Just do a search and there should be at least a dozen threads where I've recommended the Sunfire amps for K9's.
Problem is you can lead a horse to water,,,but yadda yadda yadda... LOL / JK

Good luck here.

Bret P.
 
Picked up the Sunfire this morning. Did some brief listening with the Kappa 9s that I just finished doing a partial recap(replaced all the electrolytics). Never heard bass like that before from the 9s. This amp definitely has the guts to control the 4 12” woofers. Haven’t hooked the 9s back up to the two M-504s yet to see how they sound after the recap. More to follow.
 
xero-D-hero said:
I dunno 'bout that,I've pointed out how good a combo it is here in this forum plenty of times
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I did a search for “Sunfire Kappa” and couldn’t find anything. Guess I should have tried different variants of the search. I’ll have to give another look.
 
Should be a nice combo. I ran my RS-1 bass towers off a modded M1.0T for awhile; worked well. Never a lack of power or any kind of clipping nonsense.
 
seifreit said:
I did a search for “Sunfire Kappa” and couldn’t find anything. Guess I should have tried different variants of the search. I’ll have to give another look.
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Always start searches simple.
Just use the keyword "Sunfire" by itself and those threads should pop up.
When you add the Kappa to the mix the search engine is just gonna pop out the most relevant threads.
And in the process it'll ignore the more specific threads as SOP.
So likely all the threads it kicked out were "kappa" related.

You can also do an advanced search with the member's username to get more specific results.

And always search just the relevant forums you're looking for info from,not the whole site.
That tends to zero in the search much faster.

For this topic I'd probably search this forum,the speaker forum,and maybe the solid state forum.

PITA I know...

But "search" tends to be pretty dumb,so one has to kinda get it pointed in the right direction to get good searches.

HTH

Bret P.
 
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