ICE Amps for classical music?

True dat!

Interesting I know of one case of a discerning A'goner who is also a recording industry professional I believe that used Bel Canto ref1000's to drive at first Apogee and later Avangarde Trios in their system, with a high degree of satisfaction. The fact that this amp could drive two such radically different speaker designs at two ends of the spectrum to a high degree of satisfaction was one factor in my deciding to go that way, though I sprung for the more costly mkiis mainly as a result of their more tube pre-amp friendly specs and additional power supply refinements.

I may have said this earlier (can't recall) but the move to this amp has put my ystem in the same league at least with the best systems I have heard, and conquering playback of classical music to that level was the final and toughest
barrier to break through.

Weseixas, Here I though The Scintilla was the only one ohm speaker. I am curious what ribbon speaker you have. I talked to Henry about this among some other things. If you want to know what a certain amp can do, call the builder.

There is a catch. The 250 watt H20, though 93% efficient, still needs the Fire preamp. It sends a boost to the H2O. With the two, I can drive my Scintillas to an in the room grand piano. As a warning, though, cables and source can react terrible with the H2O duo. With the right source and cables...... sky's the limit.

I am in N. California if anyone wants to hear what I have.

Mapman, I can't say how happy I am to hear your testament. Class D has got such an undeserved bad rap over the last 7 years.

It has been my experience that a great class D amp requires great everything else. By great, I don't mean expensive necessarily. The Fire preamp was made to work with the demands of a class D amp, but it also is superb with any other fine amp. Almost all tube amps match well to class D.

I still use Speltz's Anti - Cables for the ICs. I have found very thin ribbon SCs to be, by far, the best SCs.

"a great class D amp requires great everything else"

I have no data points to weigh in on this in that the class D amp was the last upgrade I did once I felt everything else was in order.

My gut feel is that the Bel Canto Ref1000mkii will not be the bottleneck in most any system that a high power, high current, high damping factor SS amp is suited for, so at that point other weaknesses might be exposed if present.

Ironically in addition to classical music, modern "loudness wars" more pop oriented CDs are the other type that have benefited most from the Bel canto ref1000mkii introduction into my system. These CDs will expose the limits of an underpowered or poorly matched amp/speaker pair IMHO. With the proper muscle behind it, one can enjoy the things that these recordings do have to offer without having to lament about shortcomings which may be at least partially due to the playback system not having enough "muscle" and authority to deliver what these kinds of CDs are capable of sounding like, for better or for worse.