Pro vs. Consumer Equipment

I use to run a Crown Pre with SAE Power years ago. I still think this system had more depth than some other amp set-ups I have had since. It was a little grainy and very unforgiving of peakiness. It did not like Dynvector cartridges at all. In this set-up I also had a Revoxx A77 reel.

Some friends of mine on the West coast swear by JBL pro drivers combined with old Macs. I don't know whether they are sold state or tube Macs. There is a rightness to them when they are set up correctly. The same has been true with old Klipschorns.

Professional poweramps usually great at higher than home volumes. Class D often used in pro poweramps is designed to feed tremendous power with small heat dissipation losses but brings very large distortions at low volume levels.

Bryston and Manley do manufacture professional poweramplifiers but they're realy created as home amp and t certainly costly. Some small venues however do acquire those for small amplifications of voice with unamplified instruments.

Can't tell anything for preamp domain but I guess it designed basically to the same basically to give out as much output voltage as possible for poweramp driving stages.

I however stand for pro-grade wires that are very inexpencive for interconnects and speakers as well with no compromise for those in "nice snakes" or even better(especially if stripped to see wires inside). I now use two runs of 14AWG Carroll Command for bi-wired setup which is a killer wire with silver-plated cooper strands.

I still have my old JBL 200 studio monitors and Crown D150 amp from way back. A year or so back I dug them out while I was waiting for my new ( used ) Speakers to arrive. Trust me don't look back!
They play loud and have great bass,but thats all I can really say compared to "Todays" stuff. Though its still fun to dig em out once in awhile.....

Thorman is right on the money. Most of that stuff sounds horrid unless you're looking for sheer brute volume. This is due to the fact that these amps are not built for sonics, they are built for rugged reliability under any / all load and thermal conditions. They are the type of amps that give SS a bad name and should be avoided unless you simply need high spl's and / or gobs of power. Sean
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PS... I've not heard EVERY "pro" amplifier, but i've worked with enough to know that i would NOT want to use them at home. At least not as a "full range" amp.

It's interesting that the ART amps have such strong advocates--there must be an exception to every rule.

The JBL pro speakers I referenced included a 15-18" woofer (I can't recall the exact size) and two horns (midrange and tweeter). The McIntosh was a tube amp as was the Crown preamp (at the time, Crown produced consumer components).

Marakanetz, thanks for sharing your views on cables. I wonder whether others have had good luck with pro cables.