Building the Audio Note Kit 1 SET amp...

Rebbi, Charles is right as Almarg pointed out, the DeCapo's are likely 86-87db. Get a true 93db or above and everything will get much, much better. And GSM is also correct with his observation that guys like the Zu fellows, Eric at Tekton and many other smaller company designers/manufacturers bust their collective behinds to stand by their product and help their customers. It's daunting, many fail despite good quality products. At any rare, quality over quantity for me and I still am antsy to read Rebbi's further observation and comments.

The it's worth noting the beyond the clipping issue the high output impedance of a set makes it more susceptible to impedance swings. To get the best performance in terms of tonality you must have higher impedance speakers. Has anyone seen an impedance curve for Tekton? An 8 ohm rating is a good start but not the whole story. Speakers truly designed for sets tend to have impedances that are more continuously higher above 8 ohm I think. Coincidents are a good example. The key in terms of clipping though is to not have low impedance at the lower frequencies.

Another key thing with a set is that it distorts with second order harmonics which are not unpleasant to the ear. It also operates mainly in class a which is known to have certain sonic benefits compared to class b. Class d is a totally different beast to compare.

Ss amps have their own set (no pun) of sins but I'm not sure there is any basis to say that a set amp is inherently of any higher quality than any other. It all depends on ones criteria for determine quality I suppose. And of corse quality varies widely within any amplifier category.

Reb the coincident triumph extreme 2 monitors appear to be in your price range. Have you seen those?

Map: The Triumph Extreme II's are $4000 with the matching stands, $3000 without. So the TE II's minus the stands would be the absolute upper limit for me if I do extraordinarily well in the sale of my De Capo's. Not impossible, but I'd be interested to see what they'd actually fetch.

Reb if it were me and I wanted to take my best shot to hit the bullseye now on paper I'd have to splurge for the co incidents. Screw the matching stands that's mostly aesthetics. They are designed to work with an amp like yours and should fit your room nicely. If it does not happen with those and your amp then either time to move on again to another approach. It should be the perfect match. On paper at least. Tektons will probably resolve your clipping issue and sound good and preserve some funds but I would want to see more impedance and phase info before I would be confident that the mating is truly as good as it might be.