Recommendation on power amp

@newtoncr

John Atinkinson isn’t wrong, but I see no benefit in regards to transparency over the Benchmark amp when monoblocked; the Benchmark has far lower distortion, especially at lower watts where you mostly will reside. The only negative of the Benchmark is the industrial look.

@mzkmcv As someone who owned the Benchmark AHB2 and tested the amp with the Magico A3. I was a little disappointed in the comparison with the Mark Levinson 585 and upwards gear. The ML gear trounced my Benchmark with regards to space between instruments, the disappearance of the speakers, and some other things that I cannot articulate now. I was bummed enough to sell the Benchmark almost immediately after that demo. The AHB2 is a very good amp (not great) and I miss it in my office relative to my current Peachtree Nova 150. However, for the Magico A3 it was not that special.

I am also looking to buy the Blade 2 once my toddler is a little older and I was thinking that the Benchmark AHB2 in monblock form would have been a giant slayer, it wasn't.

@yyzsantabarbara

You hear what you hear. However, I bet I could easily trick you into what amp you were listening to if you don’t know what you weren’t listening to. No one is immune to bias, even if subconscious, once you know the brand, price, and/or asthetic, measurements don’t tell you jack. Also, need I remind you of the $10K amp challenge.

“Space between instruments” has nothing to do with an amp besides channel mismatch and crosstalk, which neither of Benchmark nor the ML has issues with.

Also, the Blade 2 is excellent, better than most all around its price, and anything Wilson puts out, but due to its side-firing woofers, what room it’s in (or how much treatment you have) becomes a factor. Once you go far off-axis (50°+), it has huge dips around 500Hz and 4kHz and a large wide-frequency hump centered around 1kHz around 90°,  so I would suggest either a very wide room or a good amount of thick acoustic panels to the sides of the speakers.

Or, sell all your equipment, get the Dutch&Dutch 8C and dual Rythmik G25HP’s.

Of the amps I have owned (nothing top notch) I could easily tell which was which in a blind test.

1) Peachtree Nova 150. Decent mellow sound, not so clear on the high frequencies.

2) Benchmark AHB2. Clear and quiet (my fav that I owned) but the sound was coming from the speakers. The sound did not separate away from the speakers. I tried this amps with 3 speakers, Magico A3, Audience 1+1 V3, and KEF LS50 it had the same characteristics with all of them.

3) Various Bryston, 4B-ST, 7B-SST. I can always tell by the high frequencies.

4) Parsound A23. A veiled sound but not harsh

I am actually someone who thinks there is a lot of diminishing returns with higher cost audio gear. I think my bias are the opposite that you describe.

I am actively shopping for new gear and I recently heard the following 3 amps. Mark Levinson 585, SimAudio 890A, Lyngdorf 2170. I could easily pick out the Lyngdorf, but I would have a tougher time between the ML and SimAudio.

Unfortunately, during this recent shopping spree I am finding the higher cost amps sound better to me. There are many things I do not know but one thing I do know is that my hearing is incredible.

Hate to be a party pooper but our store has a room filled with amplifiers from $1,000.00 - $15k in one room and and if you add in the matching preamps you may be talking up to $25k. yes these amplifiers do sound radically different.

In our reference room we have $10k amplifiers, $19k, $14k solid state amplifiers and tube amplifiers from $8k to $38k

There are families of sound certain amplifier companies are in the fast, transparent and perhaps a bit lean or just slightly warm: Spectral, Audionet, Ayre, Chord, Sim, Bryston, Solution, T+A,  all tend to fall in this area

Then there are the warmer richer amps which may or may not accentuate the the bass with a more polite top end: Dagastino, new Krell XD, Parasound, Anthem STR, Pass Labs, Coda, Darthzeel, Thrax, Ypsilon.

then there are the very neutral punchy amplifiers Hegel, Nuprime, ARC, later CJ, VTL.

all of these are great amplifiers and will shine with the right components and system matching any brand not mentioned was not intentional. 

There are definatly increase in openess, resolution, the size, width and depth of the soundstage when you reach the uber amplifiers they just increase the sense of precence over the lesser amplifiers.

When we were searching for reference electronics for our Polymer and Paradigm Persona and Kef Blades we tried: CJ, Devialet, Chord, Thrax, Electrcompaniet, Manly Labs, until we got the T+A gear which just made the speakers come alive in ways that the other amplifiers just didn’t.

As per the OP please try the new Krell solo 575 XD based on your original post of wanting a more organic sound you might really like them, the Ayre amplifiers are very fast and are cleaner then the Krell’s but they lack the sense of flowing warmth and body that the Krell amplifiers do so well, as a Blade dealer we have found amplifiers with a bit of warmth tend to work really well with the Blades which have a very uncolored midrange and tend to like things which add a bit of warmth to the speakers.

Also the Krell are more powerful and are a lot less expensive to boot.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ