Amp Choice for Acapella Campaniles

Fred, Brian here from Artistic Audio. While I was at the CES show last January I spoke with the head designer of Acapella and he recommended using tube amps on the Campaniles. Having the Violon's in my showroom I can tell you that tubes work best on them as well. I would look for the best 50-100 watt tube amps available (preferably SET) and work from there. Your speakers will thank you for it, and so will your Ears!

Brian, I sure don't agree as the Campaniles respond to the current a good SS amp can provide.....Fred changed over from tubes to SS months ago after a very long break-in period and hasn't looked back....

Hey Bob and Brian. Don't fight, you're both right! :-)))

The Campaniles respond to high quality upstream equipment; the better the equipment the better the sound (though better is up to the ear of the beholder). I think Fred's Wolcotts, though very nice for specific speakers, are not up to the task to driving the Campaniles to their best effect and so he is finding the JC-1 works much better. And, though the head designer of Acapella likes EL34-based tube amps on his speakers, I know the Lamm ML1.1 (and I bet the WAVAC that Brian uses) has more finesse and control that no EL34-based amp that *I* know of can touch.

So, in conclusion :-), the 'best amp' works 'best', regardless if it is solidstate or tubed or hybrid, as the Acapellas are very revealing and, though quite forgiving in my experience, they do expose the quality of the amp (and other upstream components) without seeming to prefer any kind of technology over any other.

-Mike.

Mike is right in that the Acapella speakers do require the absolute finest electronics to work there magic! their seems to be no limit to how good they can get. What the Acapella speakers seem to want most is quality and purity of power, and not so much quantity of power. Take the Lamm and Wavac amps for example, these are both ultra pure sounding tube amps where as the Wolcotts are higher power but not as refined. I suppose i'm a bit spoiled in that I have been exposed to some of the finest tube amps ever made and I haven't found a solid state amp that even comes close to them. On the other hand if one can't afford the best tube designs then he or she will have to settle for a musical solid state amp that gets you 2/3rds of the way there.

While I understand that the right tube amplifier has many things to offer on these speakers, I must question Brian's experience, at least with respect to the Campanile High's which are a somewhat different animal from the Violons. The Campaniles each have 4 10" SEAS drivers in a sealed enclosure which benefit significantly from an amplifier capable of delivering high current and high damping. The Violon, in comparison, has a single woofer in a smaller cabinet whose frequency response does not extend as low as the Campaniles. I would be curious with respect to Mike and Nelli's comments as they have both the Lamm and Edge Signature amplifiers which each represent state of the art in their respective areas. I will say that I have heard very nice results from the Campaniles using a 50 watt Audio Aero amplifier but felt that the amp ocassionally ran out of steam.