plate amps

I'm a DIY'er and I too highly recommend Rythmik Audio. Brian's a great guy to deal with, he has a wide selection of products, they're reasonably priced, most of them run class AB, and they have all kinds of flexibility/adjustment.

And yes, they do take the load off the main amp/amps. I run a sat/sub system driving the sats full range with a pair of Atma-Sphere MA-1 OTL's. Using a good spl meter and test disc, the Rythmik powered subs are blended in around 50Hz. It's seamless and there's no additional filtering mucking up the purity of the satellites.

If you're running the sats full range, then the sub is not taking the load off the main, hmm, thinking---wait a minute, unless you were running the subs passively off the AtmaSpheres in parallel with the mains, in which case, you would defintiely be taking a big load off the mains, especially as AtmaSpheres like high impedances. Well a little more info I think would be helpful.

Honest1, For most applications where both low and high pass filters of the plate amp are used, the plate amp does ease the load of your main amps.

In my case, you are correct, though by using plate amps on the subs, I don't need to use as much of the MA-1's power to get to my desired spl level. Also in my case, my sats present an easy 6 Ohm load with 90db sensitivity and the MA-1's, at 140 wpc, are overkill. Actually, I've driven them with a friend's Coincident 8 watt 300b Frankensteins to great effect.