Classe CA-M400 or Theta Digital Enterprise?

Worldcat:

Thanks for the response - I see from your system you are a Theta Digital fan! I think the Citadels are out of my range. Price wise they are right in my zone. How would you characterize the sound of the Enterprise?

Last question...have you heard the new Classe monoblocks? My undertanding is the sound characteristics are a bit different than their recent designs.

Ken Golden

One thing that I noticed in the Fremer review was that the "faults" that he seemed to be finding with the Enterprises appeared to fall into the "tube vs SS" category, and if you filter those types of comments out, he seems to be giving them fairly high praise. But perhaps that's just my read of the article. At any rate, right about the time that his article first came out, I was auditioning power amps, including the Enterprises. Personally, I am very taken with the Theta Digital line of amps, and after listening to a number of amps (no CA-M400, unfortunately), I bought a pair of Enterprises for my CS3.6's (some might say this is overkill for these speakers, but you need to hear the 3.6's with some really good amps to understand why I went this route!), and an Intrepid for my surround system. The qualities of Theta's amps, and the Enterprises in particular, that I really fell for are their imaging and soundstage, definition between instruments, and overall sense of space. On top of this, I find that they are very musical in their presentation of mids, which I found to be very pleasing. FWIW, my "runner-up" to the Enterprises was the Edge NL-10, but after some in-home listening, I slightly prefered Theta to Edge.

Good luck, Tom.

Tom:

I need (well maybe not the right word) to run fully balanced. My understanding is the Edge amps only run single ended so I've ruled them out from the get go. Heard they sound nice though.

I'm not sure that Fremer is so much of a tube kind of a guy to be honest. I think his reference amp is solid state. I just think the Enterprise didn't rock his world the way the Citadel did so the review came out mixed. He's one of the few reviewers that I actually pay attention to but that doesn't stop me from putting it high up on my need-to-audition list. Considering the people behind the design of the TD amps it's got great parentage.

I will be at CES and I will listen...

Ken Golden

I have heard the classe mono's i don't really like them that much. I would prefer the Enterprises to the classe. If you can get a good deal on the Enterprises i would get them. The enterprises have lots of power and very clean sounding like all Theta amps.