My experience with magnepans of various sizes is that tube amps can sound great on them. I had the ARC VT150se monos on 3.6rs and it was sublime.
The problem is you never reach the limit of the speaker with tubes.
I had Audio valve monos too but the speaker always sounded sluggish and did not express the feeling of music being alive as the ARCs did.
However when I tried SS amps I found the speaker became much tighter and was capable of higher SPLs and clearer dynamics. I had Plinus SS amps which seemed voiced very closely to the ARC tubes, but with more control in the bass. Unfortunately they lost a bit of soul in comparison to ARC.
The most impressive sound I ever heard from my maggies was with the Halcro DM38. I didnt know my maggie could make that kind of sound! For a lot less money and 97% of the sound try Belcantos old evo gen2s, or the newer ice power models. The ref1000s will be great on them.
I know you are looking for tube amps, but see what the speakers are capable of before dumbing them down. If you just want romance at low to medium levels a tube amp will be fine and will be a fine listen.
I think the bottom line is Maggies will work fine with various tube amps of around 100w and over, but at the expense of dynamic swings which is a weakness of plannars anyway. Plus you will never get high volume levels with out the sound of the diaphram hitting magnets. They need to be controlled to squeeze that last bit of life out of them.
The problem is you never reach the limit of the speaker with tubes.
I had Audio valve monos too but the speaker always sounded sluggish and did not express the feeling of music being alive as the ARCs did.
However when I tried SS amps I found the speaker became much tighter and was capable of higher SPLs and clearer dynamics. I had Plinus SS amps which seemed voiced very closely to the ARC tubes, but with more control in the bass. Unfortunately they lost a bit of soul in comparison to ARC.
The most impressive sound I ever heard from my maggies was with the Halcro DM38. I didnt know my maggie could make that kind of sound! For a lot less money and 97% of the sound try Belcantos old evo gen2s, or the newer ice power models. The ref1000s will be great on them.
I know you are looking for tube amps, but see what the speakers are capable of before dumbing them down. If you just want romance at low to medium levels a tube amp will be fine and will be a fine listen.
I think the bottom line is Maggies will work fine with various tube amps of around 100w and over, but at the expense of dynamic swings which is a weakness of plannars anyway. Plus you will never get high volume levels with out the sound of the diaphram hitting magnets. They need to be controlled to squeeze that last bit of life out of them.