Well I must say I bought this Amp for a friend and he backed out of the deal.But for the money, I have not heard a 5 channel Amp sound this good. At $1000
bucks it was a good buy, now at $399 it is the best steal out there. The power
supply is excellent the construction is good, the sound is dynamic and clear.
I currently have up for sale, but I am so impressed with the sound I might just
keep this one. Hell a person could but two of these and still save money over
buying some mega priced amp, that may sound a bit better.

5 stars period! Because of price and what you get in sound quality, which is
excellent.

good clean sound. is an excellent amp for begginer of seperates.

maybe just my setup but a lot of speaker hiss with the center and rear speakers.

I really enjoy this amp and have found that it give everthing that a young music and ht lover likes. I have a HK AVR 20II and the amp. I like the combo but on the first day that I got the amp I noticed a lot of speaker hiss from my rear and center speakers. I don't know what is going on. I never had that problem before. I went to a local HK dealer and they said that it was probably just interference from AC plugs or that my interconnects weren't sheilded. I know that a lot of you out there would hate to hear this but I have Monster 400 mkII interconnects all around and was wondering if this was a part of the problem. I still have a little longer to return them so someone please help!!!!!!!! I have JBL ARC1000 mains, Cambridge Center Channel Plus center, and Bose 201 rears. I have twelve gauge speaker wire all around but no banana plugs. I took my entire home theater setup a couple of minutes ago to get the interconnects away from any power cords or anything that would disrupt them and the speakers still hiss. In dolby pro they hiss but in plain stereo my JBL's are just fine with no hiss at all. I am running out of patience and am going crazy. Right now I am thinking it may be the interconnects but I'm not sure. Please please please help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But besides this a great buy off of Ebay.

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wouldn't know

Power at low price

I just recently bought this amp along with HK preamp. It is a big improvment over my sony receiver that had been driving my Infinity Kappa 8.1 for the last 2 years. I am currently biamping the kappas with pa5800. The first thing that I noticed was the greatly expanded dynamic range. As a classical music listener the amp definitly brought me a few levels closer to live performance. Also th bass is alot stronger and cleaner than before, I don't even need a sub as the bass from those two 12 inch woofers are more than enough to shake the house up. The midrange benefit from this upgrade with details and warmth that my sony receiver could never deliver. overall a great product at an amazing price.

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none

Ample clean power, no lack of bass

cannot use cables with spade lugs

Due to budget limit, I have to look for inexpensive amps (already spent too much on speakers which is a pair of Infinity Prelude P-FR bought from online auction site Ubid for $1400). The PA5800 appears to be able to please many of its owners and I bought it on faith. Together with an HK PT2500 preamp, an FL8550 CDP and the Prelude main, I have my listening gears set up at a reasonable price. Only the cables, KK’s PBJ for interconnects and 8TC for spkrs, are paid at premium. The components especially the cables need some time to break in to get to their real sound. I found myself enjoying it more and more as this improvement is in progress. The sound is full range, dynamic with deep bass, nice midrange and a slightly rolled back high (could be already offset by the KK cables for their well-known tonal characters). I guess I have heard a significant portion of the capacity of the speakers although the amp isn’t really a good mate for the Prelude P-FR. In all, I am very satisfied with this amp and for awhile will not do any upgrade. In addition to music, I also watch movies and the amp seems to support the spkrs better in this regard. In particular, the amp is able to drive the 12” woofers in the P-FR to give persuasive sound in scenes e.g., a series of explosions, which rattles the floors and pound my heart (to be honest, it gives me a rather uncomfortable feeling recalling that on a wild roller coaster).

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Listened to the amp sections of Onkyo, Denon, BK receivers

Great Amp for the money..

Not intended for your Higher-End speakers and Larger rooms.

Fantastic Amp for the money, now $299. At, yes(J&R). Don't expect Hi-End sound with High-End speakers. Example Vandersteens. Also never mix and match speakers if you want it to sound good on any Amp. Tried it in my HT system, sounded very good, but not up to par with my Parasound 2505A or my Threshold, but hell what do you expect for $299. Well,
I got good clean sound for my money throughout my home. And
to the dork who gave it one star, please pull your head out of your (|)....... :) Enjoy it.......

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AP-2500 Pre/Amp using for sound in various parts of the house.

Remember when you bought your surround receiver. You went from store to store. Spent late nights on the Internet reading reviews, comparing prices and features. Asking family and friends a million and one questions. Then, finally you found it. The right price. The right features. The right brand. It was even in stock and you had enough room on your card to fit it on there. Dolby Digital, DTS, 42 galzillion DPS modes. A perfect match to those new state of the art home theater speakers you spent even more time and money on. You rush home to carefully set you new system. Every wire is secure, every cable is connected, the speakers are all in place. Your heart is racing a bit yet you remain calm as you load in Heat into your DVD player and cue up chapter 32. There's no turning back now, it's time. As the chapter starts you mentally pat yourself on the back and say to yourself, great job, all that hard work paid off. Tonight your system sounds great.

Now fast foward two weeks later. The system sounds great but it's not quite...it doesn't...you thought the speakers should sound...you just can't put you finger in it so you grab you owners manual to the receiver. Maybe you missed something. Maybe you overlooked a feature. You carefully read each page looking for an answer. You notice for the first time that this new reciever has five channel outputs "in order to use an external multi-channel amplifer". Why would I want to do that when this receiver has 120 watts x 5 with .00002 THD into 8 ohms, even more if the load drops to 4 ohms ? Good question. When you try to cram all of those features with all of that power into one chassis you had better have a great design team or you'll end up with a loud reciever that can do alot of cool things unless....What if you could seperate the power from the features. That's it!! A stand alone 5 channel amp would be great but then you remember the reason you bought a receiver was because "seperates" were way out of you budget. Where can you get an affordable 5 channel amp? Enter the HK PA5800.

Sorry about the long intro but I wanted to put you in my shoes so you can understand why I love this amp so much. I'm not a top of the line kind of guy. My budget (read wife) will not allow me to be so I have to work hard to make an audio choice that I can live with or at least one that I can improve upon. HK PA5800 when it was introduced listed for $999.00. It is currently being closed out by a few on-line and mail-order retailer for as little as 299.99 (I paid a little more for mine) . Does this mean that this is over-priced lemon that HK is trying to dump. On the contrary, this was great amp at 999.00 and an even better value at 299.99. This may be one of the best values in audio you that might see in your lifetime (unless you by your equipment out of the back of some guy's car with no remote and serial numbers, if you catch my drift) .
The sound of this amp is clean, deep, powerful, and quick. Nearly any speaker can benefit from that. Because of the balanced power chapter 32 of HEAT sounds as if I was in the streets of L.A. ducking for cover. I've always wanted a system that puts me in the middle of the action, right there on stage, or right the in the control room and finally this one does. Thanks HK.

very detailed sound

none so far

Read some great reviews here and decided to try this amp out. For 300 dollars I thought I couldn't go too far wrong. Although this amp isn't broken in yet, it already sounds better than the Carver which preceded it. As earlier reviews stated, it is detailed and has some very nice highs. Although the Carver was rated at 100 watts to the front, 110 watts to the center, the rear channels only had 60 watts. The 5800 has 80 watts all around. I need to set up my speaker levels again with AVIA to make up for the boost in my rear channels.

I am looking forward to breaking in this amp and hearing it sound even better!

(No hum at all........ but anyone else try to hook up a remote switch on using a 6-12 volt converter as the owners manual suggests? I picked a converter/adapter up- but the pin needs to be set POSITIVE or NEGATIVE and there is nothing in the manual telling me which way to set it. Anyone have any clues before I try it and blow up the amp???)

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Carver Av405, Carver TFM 15

this is to Peter........I think your reason for the poor performance is not with the 2500/5800, it is with the setup you have.......Your front speakers are rated at 4ohm....I am sure your Klipsch is rated at 8ohm and PSB at 8ohm......Your front two channels are pulling more amps than the rest of the other channels............This will always result in poor sound quality....Don't take my advice, call Harmon/Kardon customer service center...........

I still say that this Amp is the best in its class....which when it first came out was selling for $1000...........

I recently purchased a Harman Kardon PT-2500/PA-5800 combination from J&R Music World (A.K.A. Jandr.com) for a total of $599.00 (see my review of the PT-2500 in the preamplifiers section). These two pieces replaced the Sony Audio/Video receiver with Dolby Pro Logic that has served for home theater and general family music playback for the past three years (I also have a separate high-end audio only system). Some owners of this model have reported various hum problems. I encountered no unusual noise from this amp. Turn on/turn off was quiet. The toroidal power transformer is mounted behind the front panel and while I could detect a very faint hum with my ear about 6 inches away, such a hum is typical of many amps with substantial-sized power supplies -- nothing strange here. Since no one listens to music with their ear six inches from any amplifier, this point is moot. I recall one reviewer raving about the great size of the power transformer and filter caps of the PA-5800. I removed the top cover (as I always do with every new component) to take a look inside. I did not see anything out of the ordinary. The power transformer is typically sized for an amp delivering 400-500 total watts. I saw a pair of power supply filter caps of 8,200 microfarads(uf)/50 volts (16,400 uf total) on each channel, which is a moderate value when you consider that many high-end, high current amps have total power supply filtration values of 100,000 uf and more. A single circuit board carried the combined power supply and audio stages for each of the 5 channels. While the circuit board was of better quality than many other mass market products, parts quality was ordinary. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the single large heatsink serving all 5 channels was a solid chunk of finned aluminum, bolted to the chassis for even better heat dissipation. However, the edges of the fins were sharp (more on this below). This contrasts with the sinks made up from thin sheet metal which is often found in mass market amplifiers and receivers. The construction of the PA-5800 is such that the heatsink is in the middle, with the power transformer and main circuit board on either side. The single power transformer has separate secondary windings for each channel and in order to get the secondary supply wires from the transformer to the main board, they are unceremoniously draped across and in physical contact with the heatsink. The sharp edges of the heatsink pose a threat of the secondary supply wires getting nicked. Tacky if not dangerous, Harman Kardon. The owner's manual advises running the PA-5800 on a 20-amp AC circuit and apparently HK owners have picked up on this idea. With a total power consumption of 600 watts for the PA-5800, this recommendation is overkill. I even tested the turn on surge current draw of this amp (when cold, where current draw is the greatest) and it was about 6 amps. A 15-amp branch circuit should be more than enough. The power amp of my audio-only system has a total power consumption of 1,500 watts. I have been running this amp on a 15-amp dedicated AC line without any problem. Whether a circuit is 15 or 20 amps, the more important issue is to make sure that it is not overloaded. Now on to the sound. Straight out of the box, I found the PA-5800 to sound pretty good. Midrange and highs were clearer than the Sony receiver and bass was smooth and reasonably deep. I expect overall performance levels to increase as the amp breaks in. This is a welcome departure from the Sony receiver, which tended to get very boomy at times, often prompting a reach for the volume and bass controls. I encountered no such boominess with the PA-5800. Apart from the one complaint I have about the routing of the power transformer secondary wires, the PA-5800 is an excellent bargain. Even if it were retailing for more than $399.00, it would still be a great buy. Webmaster note that 1/2 stars are needed at this site. I give the PA-5800 5 stars for value and 4 1/2 stars for performance.

Excellent power and clarity. Great sound for a great price.

Music is not as good as movies. Excellent for Home Theater.

I bought this amp last October from J & R for $350. So far it has performed excellent for movies. It is not as good for 2 channel stereo as my receiver, but the sound is still very good. A must have for the home theater enthusiast. Sounds as good as amps costing 2 to 3 times as much.