Quickie a good match with Rotel RB-981?

[kidmoe]

Hi everyone, first post here.  I was interested in building a Quickie as a front to my Rotel RB-981 amp but was hoping to get opinions about how good of a match this would be in terms of gain and impedance.  The Rotel amp has an input impedance of 33K Ohms and sensitivity of 1V.  It is rated at 130 wpc into 8ohms.  The speakers will likely be Vandersteen 2C.  I've read that in some instances the Quickie might have a bit too much gain and was wondering of that would be the case here.  Thanks for your help...Moe

 

[Paul Joppa]

You need to know the sensitivity as well, in order to do this calculation.

Google led me quickly to the Stereophile review which quotes the manufacturer saying it's 88dB/w/m. That means you need 25 watts to get 102dB, which is probably loud enough for most audiophiles most of the time. That's about 1/5 of the maximum power, or 0.45v input to the power amp.

Then you need to know your source capability. A standard CD player would put out 2 volts, so you need a Quickie output of 0.225 times the input. Maximum gain of the Quickie is 2.2 times, so you would never be using more than half the volume control rotation. That's workable, but on the edge. You can try it stock and see; if there is a problem you can do a simple modification to the Rotel or to the Quickie.

 

[Grainger49]

Just to be clear here, the forum here can step you through what you would need to do if you need to reduce the output of the Quickie.