Experience on B&W N800 with Tube Amplifier

I currently utilize a pair of Cary V12R monoblocks(100 watts triode/ 200 UL)to drive a pair of B&W 801 Matrix ser. II's(87bd eff.)I get fairly tight tunefull bass and great mids/treb, utilizing triode(always). Very dynamic, even on large scale music. I think it's due to the large, high quality transformers Dennis Had uses on these amps. My room is only 14' x 18' w/ 13' cathedral ceiling, so it dosnt take too much to get into the high 90's/low 100 spl levels. Hope this helps. Jim

One amp you might consider is the Moscode 401HR. Its
a hybrid amp that has many of the qualities of good tube
amp. I'm using it on my Signature 805's with great results.
It replaced the well respected DNA 500. You can audition
it for 30days and if you don't like it you can return it.

Cmach

Hi,

I own the N800's and used to drive them with a pair of Bryston 4B-SST's, yes a pair, and they rocked, then I was on the upgrade path, the ML33H's or the ML436' were my target. My wife and I went to a hi-fi show and heard these tube amps driving a pair of N800s, and they sounded way better than any of the solid state gear that was driving them. http://www.octave.de/english/products/PowerAmplifiers/INFO-MRE130.htm

I demoed the Octave MRE 130's with Super Black Box (outboard capacitive storage) and they made my N800's sound like I was in the room with the performance, the music felt more alive, and intimate despite losing some lower end bass compared to the solid state amps, I decided to get a pair. I addressed flushing the bass issue with a B&W ASW850 subwoofer and Velodyne SMS1 subwoofer controller. This has been an excellant combination and the soundstage is awesome. With the sub tapped into the second line out from my pre, I can use the Velodyne SMS1 to fine tune and integrate my sub with the rest of the system.

I am contemplating doing a demo with another pair, I would like to try bi-amping just to experiment and try to see if I get some more additional headroom.

Now these are available in Europe and Japan, and have recieved high marks and reference ratings, in fact the Octave combo HP500SE preamp and the MRE130's went head to head against the ML432 and ML preamp and they were both rated reference class in the German magazine Audio.

I am not sure what your price range is because the pair is 13500euro, about $16875 US dollars at $1.25 dollars per euro. I recieved a great dealer discount and a great trade in on my Brystons; so I did not have to pay that much. They are available in 120 and 240 volts and use 4 KT88's in each mono amp providing 140 watts into 4 ohms. They advertise these amps as being able to drive difficult load speakers, inlcuding the N800's.

Ciao,
Audioquest4life

For N800, its always nice to put tubes somewhere in the chain.
I heard a number of times, tube pre-amp with a powerful s/s amp.

Tube pre: Jadis, Modwright, Blue Circle, CAT, Hovland, Cary

solid state amps: Krells, Classe, Big musical fidelities, Mark Levinsons, and bigger Bats s/s.

I heard many many amps on the 800N speakers. And yess the most ss like Krell and ML where not the sound I liked. I use a modidfied Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300 power. This one uses also tubes and you have a lot of power and control to. I changed the old transformers to E Transformers, those gave me much more control and also a very natural sound in the mid freq.