Odyssey Kismet Reference series.

I went from a Stratos Extreme+++ to the full Kismet stereo amp in the Stratos case.  There is quite a difference and well worth the upgrade price.  The bass goes much deeper, you can see more into the soundstage, there is an over all ease to the music and the musicality is better all the way around.  I compared my Kismet against the Sanders Magtech amp.  There was NO comparison, I liked the sound of the Kismet much better and the Kismet amp with 200wpc sounded much more powerful than the Magtech at 500wpc.

I had the opposite experience with the Magtech and Kismet--granted I had an early version of the Kismet and am not sure they were biased properly.

However, the Kismet would strain at around 75db on my Magnepan 3.7’s. The Magtech sounded much more natural. The Kismet may have had slightly more micro-detail though.

For reference, I also have a HT-3 Extreme ++++ and thought it sounded the same as the Kismet in Stratos monos that I had.

I am driving GE Triton 1 speakers, soon the Triton Reference and it sounded much better than the Magtech amp.  However, my speakers aren't power hungry panels and my speakers have a 1600 watt subwoofer amp in each cabinet.

I was able to try a magtech with my 3.7i's and it had no problem driving them, and sounded good, although a bit on the bright side.  Remember that the magtech is pumping out 900 watts at 4 ohms into Maggie's.  However, it's not always the wattage but the current when driving inefficient speakers.  I was just listening to a 4 month old Stratos Extreme with the Symphonic line caps and Groneberg wiring (80% of a Kismet) that I picked up here on Audiogon and I'm really loving it over the magtech.  And I'm only running about 270 watts compared to 900.  But I'm putting out about 70 amps of current.  Very, very pleased.