Add Ayre and Simaudio to your list.
Strangely Alan Shaw of Harbeth also likes Hegel, but I've never been a fan. |
Thank you all for these suggestions. The vibe I get is 100W + to do these speakers justice. Even Class A under 100W need not apply.
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@twoleftears I am using a Hegel H160 to power my Harbeth 30.1, and find it to be excellent. I did not buy the Hegel because of Alan Shaw's high opinion of the manufacturer, but it is interesting to note what he likes so much about their amps. From the Harbeth forum in May: My position on Hegel is abundantly clear. It is the only hifi amp I have ever measured in my lab that has what I consider to be a proper gain structure throughout.
In layman's language that means that with a 'hot' source pumping audio volts into the input channel it is practically impossible to clip or overload the input. That indicates to me a mature, pragmatic real-world approach to the circuit design in a market where far too many amps have input stage clipping evidenced by the ridiculously low setting of the volume control (typically 10 o'clock or lower) at which the output clips. Hence a hard, hard, grainy sound. Indeed, I'd suspect that the extreme sensitivity of the volume control (hardly on, really loud) is prima facie evidence of clipping.
I have been playing P3XD over the last days via one of my H390s and with the volume at about 60/99, I have lots of power reserve and a clean, loud, unclipped sound. |
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op
one point to mention here -- naim’s are much more powerful than their super conservative published ratings suggest... and the quality of their design and sound are really excellent - don’t be fooled by the supernait rated at 80 wpc
@whipsaw
separately, good to know alan shaw, designer / owner of harbeth, who is publicly ’amplifier-agnostic’ -- and yet the main amp used in his testing and listening is a hegel h360 -- draw from that any conclusions you like hahahaha |