This is for Georgehifi especially but others can chime in.

bubba12 OP160 posts01-26-2018 10:07amI’ve sold the Devialet 400. Frankly,I didn’t like it.

Doesn’t surprise me, I’ve yet to hear a class-D yet that’s sounded right in the upper mids/highs, either too rolled off, soft, cold or harsh depending on the switching frequencies filter’s filtering characteristics. Great in the bass and upper bass though.

Yes the XA25 is a little short on power, should sound very nice (being high bias Class-A series) from low to medium levels.
Also it’s gain is only 20dB so an active preamp with bit of gain is needed to partner with it.

The XA60.8 would be my pick for you, still the high bias series, and should have enough power for the  Dynaudio C-1 's, and it's a higher gain than the XA25 at 26db so you could get away with a passive preamp and save a stack on money.   

Cheers George

I appreciate your input @georgehifi . What is your opinion of the 260.8 monos vs. 60.8? I will be using the XP-12 preamp for either. 

I love the sound of well made Class-A.
Way back I built some very large pure 100w pure Class-A ones using 20 x Hirel EB/ED 204’s BJT’s per channel and a 5kva transformers 500,000uf per channel, that were a 3 man lift, they were water cooled because of the huge amount of heat that needed to be dissipated, and were size of a large coffee table.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/parts/76846-whatever-hirel-transistors.html

My preference is like Nelsons (if you delve into his past) for the sweetness and effortless sound of Class-A which will come from in a smaller way from the XA A/B amps.
The XA series has more Class-A less Class-B
The X series has less Class-A and more Class-B

So it all comes down to which flavour of "Class" your drawn to. For me it would be for the XA’s.

Cheers George

PS: Love these older class-a monsters, Mark Levinson ML2 monoblocks, only 25w Class-A into 8 ohms, nothing more, but said to be able to do the "almost" doubling wattage act down to 1ohm

https://ucarecdn.com/c5da1bf6-48bb-420e-b088-b6dbf0dceb7a/-/scale_crop/840x630/center/

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9uGHPSseR-w/U3aWYTrghsI/AAAAAAAB8yI/XxdvN_K7-jk/s1600/ML2a.JPG

Cheers George