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"Warm Sounding" Solid State Amplifiers

As a Canadian I am naturally a huge fan of Bryston products but not long ago I switched things up for a NAD C355BEE integrated amp and instantly realized what I had been missing in terms of warmth, sweetness and overall pleasant sound.

I'm interested in moving up from there into some Class A or A/B amps but I don't know of any other warm sounding Solid State amps other than Pass Labs which are out of my price range at the moment.

Tubes are obviously "where it's at" as they would say but the maintenance factor is somewhat of a deterrent for me. Should I just go for an M series NAD amp or is there another intermediate product between that and Pass Labs??
pontifex
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"Enter the subjective nature of our hobby. I always knew diminishing thd with decreasing power was the way to go. That's what makes sense. It's a shooting gallery out there right now and the prey is ripe for the picking. However I think I have a handle on what the rules are."

After reading some of your posts, I can't help but think that you're focusing way to much on the rules of audio, and not enough on the music. If you continue going in this direction, you'll just get more and more frustrated. You're never going to have all of your questions answered, so you might as well make the best of it and not worry about a number on a piece of paper.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,834 posts
 
^^ The number on the bit of paper is a good example of the Emperor's New Clothes.

We all know this- can you definitively say how an amplifier will sound by looking at it specs? We all know we have to take the amp home and play it to see if it will work in our systems. The paper specs are for marketing- the specs were not designed to have very much to do with how we hear; they have everything to do with selling the amp.

Now if we developed specs based on human hearing/perceptual rules then progress would be made.
csontos
1,311 posts
 
Well, my experience has been that sometimes the emperor is a good guy whose clothes have been altered.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,834 posts
 
^^ :) so you are saying you can tell how an amplifier sounds from its specs? Like many analogies there is a certain point where it falls apart.

I find that if anything, there is an inverse relationship with THD (higher will likely sound better) a positive relationship with IM (lower will sound better) and wider bandwidth is usually good. But even knowing that I still can't predict how it will sound.
csontos
1,311 posts
 
Of course not. As you say, and as I've also stated, specs are an indication of potential. What I meant was that sometimes the specs are not window dressing. Lots of horrible sounding amps have great specs but great sounding amps also always have great specs. But the point I was trying to make clear is that truly great sounding amps that happen to be ss are not as rare as you might think.
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