What makes you build a system around an amplifier?

Guys,

Let's leave a welcoming environment for those who start with amps please.

Too much of "you are doing it wrong" and we'll never get to hear the other point of view.


Best,


E

It is far easier to carry an amp to hear speakers than speakers to hear amplifiers. 

You **certainly** without reservation want to start with the amp first!

The reason is simple: you might have a preference for a certain kind of amp, for example, tube or solid state. Maybe you've heard how much better an amp can be if it lacks feedback. That sort of thing.

If you start with the speaker first, you may be painted into a very expensive corner. Here are some examples:

If you start with the Sound Labs because you fell in love with the speed, delicacy, bandwidth and sheer convincing qualities those speakers have in spades, you're screwed if you also only will deal with solid state. You will never get the performance out of that speaker! The speaker has a 30 ohm peak in the bass which is easy for a tube amp and hard for a solid state amp (IOW overall weak power with weak bass). At the other end of the range, the speaker is pretty low impedance (1.5 to 3 ohms depending on the position of the Brilliance control) which will cause most solid state amps to be too bright and nothing for it but to turn down the Brilliance control and deal. This is the case with most ESLs BTW.

If you happen to prefer tube sound, you will have a very difficult row to hoe if you get Magnaplanars. That speaker is very revealing, and there are only a handful of large tube amps that really make the bandwidth and power that are both needed for that speaker to sound right.

I can go on, but the point is very obvious- its a foolish act to get a speaker first and then discover that its incompatible with the type of amplification you prefer. You'll have to start all over again, which sucks.

Atmasphere,
You present a very rational explanation for selecting an amplifier "then" choosing an appropriate speaker match. I’ve done it either way over the years but discovered that at least for me deciding on the amplifier first proved to be most sucessful.

I also acknowledge that  this option puts me in the distinct minority in the audiophile community but that’s okay with me. What you wrote mimics my thought process in beginning with the power amplifier. Again, most will find eventual success with either approach. 
Charles

Hey…you asked...My current favorite amp (by a mile) is a Dennis Had "Inspire" Fire Bottle SEP (pentode) HO (high output, and the only item ever in my gear heap that says "HO" on it). Bought it on a whim when a slightly used one appeared, and it's been big fun…extremely sensitive (in a good way) to any tube swapping including rectifiers, only has 4 tubes so less cost to roll everything, is the cleanest and quietest amp I've ever used in a system, and has that sound that I personally got tired of hearing about…until I bought this thing…one of the few times the hype (mostly from Had himself in his Ebay rants with misspellings and unbridled enthusiasm) held up to the product. Note that I've realized in my enthusiastic support of these amps that they're nearly unobtainable relative to other stuff…somewhat randomly marketed on Ebay whenever he cranks out another one, although his well regarded headphone amps can be bought through Moon in NC. I bet Shindo and Audio Note amps sound great, but at 1500 bucks or so the Fire Bottle is so laughably inexpensive for a "boutique" hand wired and well thought out amp it makes you wonder how the other guys get away with selling their stuff for many thousands more.