Quote Originally Posted by RGA
Basically I think people need to get out of their house and out of their chair reading books and go and listen.

One of the best set-ups I have ever heard for sane money was my speakers connected to the SET soro integrated amp(~11watts) with AN cd player. Set-up properly I'd run this set-up against any system you care to name at double the money. Which is why the heck I bought the speakers after four long years of trying to find something. Since the AN system with its set amp will put out more bass response than any other standmount I have heard and presents an easy load and high sensitivity the fact that that the amp can't reach 2hz is irrelvant since speakers don't hit down there.

It is about system matching and if you've tuned your speaker for such amplifiers you're not going to have problems. The AN's use almost no damping in their speakers because the box itself is part of the sound, one reason that their loorstanding AN E produces deeper and more realistic bass at a list price of ~2500.00(assuming it sounds 80% as good as the same designed better parts AN E Sec) than the N801 at more than $10,000.00 even with Bryston Monoblocks with their 1000 watts.

This is not to say youwon't want or even NEED Bryston amps(I like them myself very much), but it is not required to get good sound. I run my Audio Notes with a non tube amp. Incidentally I bought the amp over the old AQ1003DT tube amp(though I never heard the AQ1003 with my speakers as they had sold their demo amp and I already had the Sugden by then). Still for the CDM 1NT and the Studio 100 the Sugden was better largely because of the bass response, and largely because these speakers have harder to drive dips etc. The AN Soro SET stomps my amp however. That is unfortunate, it may not loo technically as pretty as some graphs might state...but sound wise you'd have to be deaf not to know which one presents life from 2d and the one that merely gives you a sense of soemthing more than 2d. Unfortunately the Soro also has a price tag for "life" that is well beyond my current means. And the Sugden is a valve like ss amp. Intereting how so many ss amps like to try and create the tube sound. Those engineers seem to know where the best sound is, so they attempt to emulate it. Even Bryston's B60R has made an attempt to 'tube up" their high frequencies in the reviews I've been reading on them.

And now McIntosh's top end gear is no less than tube gear. They switched because of insensitive lousy speakers, now that speaker makers have gone to H/T they have made thier speakers easier to drive because their faced with terrible receivers as amplifiers. So in a way hme theater has made speakers easier to drive so tube amps and low powered class a solid state amps can come back and start selling.

In the end There are good and bad examples of both. As for power amps I would probably prefer a Solid state unit. Integrated's it depends and preamps probably a tube. The reason I would take a SS power amp is that if you own speakers that are power suckers they probably were not built for tube amps. Chances are I would not want the power sucker speaker - Heavy damping damps out the life of the music IMO just from the speakers I have heard. Maybe exceptions.
I am glad some companies are building easier to drive speakers. I disagree that just matching components will necessarily yield the best sounding system in the world. It works up to a point. Simply put, it takes the best of all, and matched, to sound the best. As an extreme example, a $500 amp isn't going to be the best system in the world no matter which speaker is used. I sometimes think too much is made of synergy, although it certainly does help at any given price point.

I have changed my views on amps recently as I have heard two systems, one with tube preamp and SS amp, and the other a tube preamp and tube PP amp, and both were decisively better than all the SET amps I have ever heard. Both systems had more "magic" and sonic honesty in the midrange, but also had the complete package of bass and highs. The wattages were, I believe, 250 watts and 25 watts respectively. I think small amps and high efficiency speakers will soon be a thing of the past, except for those, of course, who can't afford these amps and who still want reasonable fidelity at a low cost. But they certainly aren't the best by a long shot from what I have recently heard.