XXHighEnd

Hi,
There has been a lot of discussions about gain clones, but my current speakers require >/= 300W of power (high current) to play comfortably. My journey into high powered amps did not go well with class D, which recently seems to have progressively worsened from W7 to W8.

I know there has been some very good success with Sanders Magtech amps. But a few additional choices will be very appreciated.

Regards,
VJ

XXHE sounds great with my Spectral (don't have an NOS1), but I don't know its availability where you are.

Hi VJ,

I am really intrigued to find out which speakers are you referring to which require 300W of power to drive them. Its rather unusual to require so much power for home use speakers at least.

Regards,

Arvind

Hi VJ,

The Arion HS-500 is the best amp I have heard.  Tube input stage, Class D based around a proprietary power supply.  Very fast with prodigious grip and power.

See them here http://www.arionaudio.com/HS_500.pdf (http://www.arionaudio.com/HS_500.pdf)
Cheers,

Anthony

Hi

If 300 Watt is minimum, 1.000Watts must be enough: Musical Fedelity KW amps or some of the pro sound stuff should do the trick.

As an unrequested and maybe unwelcome advice:
All amps increase distortion at increasing power levels. In addition a low efficiency speaker waists all this power into heat (more than 99,9%) heating up the voicecoils and changing the speakerparameters. I have yet to hear a system that makes this high power - low efficiency concept work.
Many systems on this forum are based on high to very high efficiency speakers, not conincidently!

Regards, Coen

Hi,

No. of questions and opinions, thanks all!!

@Arvind: Latest speakers are the HHR TLS-IIs. Single driver design.  Unfortunately they are power/current hungry.... 200w minimum.

@acg: class D will not work. I think it has to do with what the amp can't do outside the listening band. Learnt it the hard way with nCores.

@CoenP: You are indeed correct, if I did have to do it allover again i'll think of horns, but they require a lot of work (a lot of work) to get it to this point.
Thanks for the tip on the titans, but I'm looking for personal experience regarding synergy of amps and XXHE/NOS1

@jud: I use NOS1, and spectral system will be more complicated with their design philosophy!

Hopefully Peter has something up his sleeve that will work for me.

Regards,
VJ

Hi VJ,

The speakers are 86 dB sensitivity, which are quite low. So they would need considerable power to drive them.

I use the CAT JL 3 monos, 150w, driving my 89dB speakers & I am never short of power. SQ is fantastic as expected from a well designed tube amp.

Regards,

Arvind

Arvind,
Thank you for the suggestion, CATs do look very interesting. Have you experimented with and without the preamp, and is there a difference?
Thanks,
Regards,
VJ

Hi VJ,

Unfortunately without a preamp the speakers can't be driven.

Regards,

Arvind

umm this is kind of a coincidence, but I sent Peter an email recently about my JL3 mono amps that I need to let go of.  They are indeed excellent amps.

Why can't you drive the CAT amps directly using your DAC outputs and XXHE as a volume control?

Hi SeVeRed,

There is very faint sound from the speakers with XX at 0 dB.

Regards,

Arvind