One Amp To ‘Rule’ Them All....

brettmcee,

    Your Kappas are 6 ohm nominal but can drop between 1 and 2 ohms at 90Hz and are notoriously hard to drive.  You need a high current amp that at least doubles its power from 8 ohms to 4 ohms but one that can handle loads down to 1-2 ohms is preferable.  Only a limited number of amps are capable of this.
       I'd suggest bi-amping them.  If you prefer a single amp and want McIntosh, a used McIntosh MC2500 or MC2600 would likely work well with your Kappas.  But used high current amps such as Mark Levinson, Krell, Aragon and Adcom would also work.
     I can think of some better solutions but would like to first know your budget and whether you'd want new or used.  I'd still recommend bi-amping for best results.  Some single new high current amps will drive them but would be considerably more expensive unless you're willing to limit the playback volume.

Tim 
     

no matter what amp you have the speakers are the answer.took me a few years until i found the solution.i run 3 pairs of stereo speakers, all different makes and all different size drivers on my main amp. AR..SONY..MISSION.
the more the better...dont leave any gaps in the spectrum!hooked up another amp and speakers on the variable line out from the main amp, when i power the 2nd amp up it blows the mind...4 pairs of speakers all in stereo pointing at me..JBL control 1's running max 50wrms x 2.

brettmc...do yourself a favor and find an old nad 3020 as a reference amp for your ears. wont cost you much...love them..the musical tone is awesome.
Once you have had a good listen to that please tell me your thoughts.If happy buy a power amp and have fun.its all in the preamp!  remove the links and hook up some power!

For me it was not all in the preamp. When I went passive ( Luminous Axiom Walker mod unit ), I began to hear all of my recordings for the 1st time.

I wish to define for the whole audio community one or more common, competant, reliable, well executed, sonically comprehensive, reasonably affordable amplifiers that we can begin to use as ‘reference amplifiers’ to judge other amplifiers by. That’s it.

A lot depends on what you’re trying to do.

With any amplifier its all about distortion, and not all designers consider the same distortions important.


The human ear uses the higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure; if there are higher ordered harmonics as distortion, the amp will sound brighter and harsher than real life. This is fundamental to the tubes/transistors debate.


So are you looking for a benchmark that has the lowest distortion? If so, its unlikely that amp will ever sound right- such amps tend to use large amounts of feedback to linearize the voltage response of the amp (so its output is flat on all loudspeakers) and to eliminate distortion. The problem is that the application of distortion, while suppressing a lot of distortion, adds some of its own and its all that higher ordered variety so its audible even in very small amounts.


This of course is an argument against feedback; the problem is that the spec sheets we’re all used to seeing are designed to make the product look good on paper rather than allow us to tell how it sounds! This is why we have to audition the product regardless of what the spec sheet says.


If you want to eliminate the distortion caused by feedback, you have to eliminate the feedback. This means you can’t expect flat frequency response from the amp with many loudspeakers, but OTOH since the ear often favors tonality caused by distortion over actual frequency response, this might not be so bad, especially given that no speaker is really flat in the first place.


However there is a means of dealing with this, for more seehttp://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php