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Best Amp to drive my Apogee Stages?

Greetings all.
I am wondering if I might get some good suggestions from anyone who might be firmiliar with the Apogee Stages. I have owned them for quite awhile, but due to blowing up my Krell (300i)intergrated amplifier more than once now (a $400 bill to fix it each time) I beleive that it is time to buy the right amplifier for the job. I need more power for sure, but my wallet is light these days. This means that I must minimize my purchase to something definitly under $2K and even more like $1200 price range. This seems to limit me quite a bit in my findings, but I am wondering if I might have missed something with my research so far? I have reviewed Krell, Levinson, Pass Labs and Threshold to date. Each have older options in my price range, but I am not certain if any will work better with my speakers?

Any thoughts out there?

Thank you in advance.

-LoveItLoud
loveitloud
clavil
254 posts
 
Clavil, How do you know when you have a speaker controlled "perfectly"?
The truth is you may never hear the true potential of a speaker like the Apogee. Because this is a hard speaker to drive there is no amplifier happy with the Apogee load therefore any amplifier connected to this type of speaker will never sound it's best.

than let's replace perfectly by best possible ;-)
obviously, a strong and stable amplifier at low impedance and with a high damping factor will do a better job than a weak one, and most of tubes or class A ...

considering the budget of our friend your suggestion choice of the Rowland 5 is good one and I am sure he will notice a big improvement

once again: I have been driving my Infinity for 14 years with an David Belles OCM (200 watts) + Treshold pre ... the day I tried Rowland (1000 Watt into 4 Ohms and Damping Factor 1000 at 1 kHz I was just schocked ... I couldn't believe my ears !

I discovered after 14 years how my Infinty can sound !!

clavil
254 posts
 
will do a better job than a weak one ... I should have added

in this case
rrog
1,958 posts
 
The amount of watts is not the issue. It is the load the amplifier has to deal with. True, a higher quality amplifier will sound better, but the Apogee is a hard speaker to drive and it is the load that degrades the sound of the amplifier.
gallant_diva
143 posts
 
In fact, the amount of watts is the issue. The impedence of Apogees speakers, barring the Scintilla, is 4 ohms. So most amplifiers can handle that. It is their low sensitivity that precludes most amps because they will not have the watts to run the speakers at decent sound pressure level.

In the case of the Stage, the sensitivity is a bit higher than other Apogees and also the spaker itself will not play very very loud (althoug it is good enough for most music except very loud rock or large orchestral music). Therefore, a 100-150 WPC good tube will drive it very well to the **Stage's maximum cability**. Having 400-500 WPC will not help any further although will not hurt either.

In the case of other Apogees, a 100-150 WPC *can* drive the speaker for low volume (e.g., vocals) but not for obtaining a good sound pressure level. Hence you will need more power.
rrog
1,958 posts
 
The Stage actually goes below 4 ohms and while this may not be a problem for your monster tube amplifiers it can be a problem for other amps. However, the point I was trying to make is that an amplifier's sound quality will vary depending on the load it is driving regardless of the amplifier's power rating. Even your tube amplifiers would be happier if they were driving a speaker with an 8 ohm load.
BTW, whatever happened to the electrostics speakers you were building?
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