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My Long List of Amplifiers and My Personal Review of Each!

So I have been in a long journey looking to find the best amplifiers for my martin logan montis. As you know, the match between an amplifier and speakers has to be a good "marriage" and needs to be blend exquisitely. Right now, I think I might have found the best sounding amplifier for martin logan. I have gone through approximately 34-36 amplifiers in the past 12 months. Some of these are:

Bryston ST, SST, SST2 series
NAD M25
PARASOUND HALO
PARASOUND CLASSIC
KRELL TAS
KRELL KAV 500
KRELL CHORUS
ROTEL RMB 1095
CLASSE CT 5300
CLASSE CA 2200
CLASSE CA 5200
MCINTOSH MC 205
CARY AUDIO CINEMA 7
OUTLAW AUDIO 755
LEXICON RX7
PASS LABS XA 30.8
BUTLER AUDIO 5150
ATI SIGNATURE SERIES 6005

With all that said, the amplifiers I mentioned above are the ones that in my opinion are worth mentioning. To make a long story short, there is NO 5 CHANNEL POWER AMP that sounds as good as a 3ch and 2ch amplifier combination. i have done both experiments and the truth is that YOU DO lose details and more channel separation,etc when you select a 5 channel power amplifier of any manufacturer.
My recollection of what each amp sounded like is as follows:

ATI SIGNATURE SERIES 6005 (great power and amazing soundstage. Very low noise floor, BUT this amplifiers NEEDS TO BE cranked up in order to fully enjoy it. If you like listening at low volume levels or somewhat moderate, you are wasting your time here. This amp won’t sound any different than many other brands out there at this volume. The bass is great, good highs although they are a bit bright for my taste)

NAD M25 (very smooth, powerful, but somewhat thin sounding as far as bass goes)
Bryston sst2(detailed, good soundstage, good power, but can be a little forward with certain speakers which could make them ear fatiguing at loud volumes)

Krell (fast sounding, nice bass attack, nice highs, but some detail does get lost with certain speakers)

rotel (good amp for the money, but too bright in my opinion)

cary audio (good sound overall, very musical, but it didn’t have enough oomph)

parasound halo (good detail, great bass, but it still holds back some background detail that i can hear in others)

lexicon (very laid back and smooth. huge power, but if you like more detail or crisper highs, this amp will disappoint you)

McIntosh mc205 (probably the worst multichannel amp given its price point. it was too thin sounding, had detail but lacked bass.

butler audio (good amplifier. very warm and smooth sweet sounding. i think for the money, this is a better amp than the parasound a51)

pass labs (very VERY musical with excellent bass control. You can listen to this for hours and hours without getting ear fatigue. however, it DOES NOT do well in home theater applications if all you have is a 2 channel set up for movies. The midrange gets somewhat "muddy" or very weak sounding that you find yourself trying to turn it up.

classe audio (best amplifier for multi channel applications. i simply COULDNT FIND a better multi channel amplifier PERIOD. IT has amazing smoothness, amazing power and good bass control although i would say krell has much better bass control)

Update: The reviews above were done in January 2015. Below is my newest update as of October 2016:



PS AUDIO BHK 300 MONOBLOCKS: Amazing amps. Tons of detail and really amazing midrange. the bass is amazing too, but the one thing i will say is that those of you with speakers efficiency of 87db and below you will not have all the "loudness" that you may want from time to time. These amps go into protection mode when using a speaker such as the Salon, but only at very loud levels. Maybe 97db and above. If you don’t listen to extreme crazy levels, these amps will please you in every way.

Plinius Odeon 7 channel amp: This is THE BEST multichannel amp i have ever owned. Far , but FAR SUPERIOR to any other multichannel amp i have owned. In my opinion it destroyed all of the multichannel amps i mentioned above and below. The Odeon is an amp that is in a different tier group and it is in a league of its own. Amazing bass, treble and it made my center channel sound more articulate than ever before. The voices where never scrambled with the action scenes. It just separated everything very nicely.

Theta Dreadnaught D: Good detailed amp. Looks very elegant, has a pleasant sound, but i found it a tad too bright for my taste. I thought it was also somewhat "thin" sounding lacking body to the music. could be that it is because it is class d?

Krell Duo 300: Good amp. Nice and detailed with enough power to handle most speakers out there. I found that it does have a very nice "3d" sound through my electrostatics. Nothing to fault here on this amp.
Mark Levinson 532H: Great 2 channel amp. Lots of detail, amazing midrange which is what Mark Levinson is known for. It sounds very holographic and will please those of you looking for more detail and a better midrange. As far as bass, it is there, but it is not going to give you the slam of a pass labs 350.5 or JC1s for example. It is great for those that appreciate classical music, instrumental, etc, but not those of you who love tons of deep bass.

 It is articulate sounding too
Krell 7200: Plenty of detail and enough power for most people. i found that my rear speakers contained more information after installed this amp. One thing that i hated is that you must use xlr cables with this amp or else you lose most of its sound performance when using RCA’s.

Krell 402e: Great amp. Very powerful and will handle any speaker you wish. Power is incredible and with great detail. That said, i didn’t get all the bass that most reviewers mentioned. I thought it was "ok" in regards to bass. It was there, but it didn’t slam me to my listening chair.

Bryston 4B3: Good amp with a complete sound. I think this amp is more laid back than the SST2 version. I think those of you who found the SST2 version of this amp a little too forward with your speakers will definitely benefit from this amp’s warmth. Bryston has gone towards the "warm" side in my opinion with their new SST3 series. As always, they are built like tanks. I wouldn’t call this amp tube-like, but rather closer to what the classe audio delta 2 series sound like which is on the warm side of things.

Parasound JC1s: Good powerful amps. Amazing low end punch (far superior bass than the 402e). This amp is the amp that i consider complete from top to bottom in regards to sound. Nothing is lacking other than perhaps a nicer chassis. Parasound needs to rework their external appearance when they introduce new amps. This amp would sell much more if it had a revised external appearance because the sound is a great bang for the money. It made my 800 Nautilus scream and slam. Again, amazing low end punch.

Simaudio W7: Good detailed amp. This amp reminds me a lot of the Mark Levinson 532h. Great detail and very articulate. I think this amp will go well with bookshelves that are ported in order to compensate for what it lacks when it comes to the bass. That doesn’t mean it has no bass, but when it is no Parasound JC1 either.
Pass labs 350.5: Wow, where do i begin? maybe my first time around with the xa30.8 wasn’t as special as it was with this monster 350.5. It is just SPECTACULAR sounding with my electrostatics. The bass was THE BEST BASS i have ever heard from ANY amp period. The only amp that comes close would be the jC1s. It made me check my settings to make sure the bass was not boosted and kept making my jaw drop each time i heard it. It totally destroyed the krell 402e in every regard. The krell sounded too "flat" when compared to this amp. This amp had amazing mirange with great detail up top. In my opinion, this amp is the best bang for the money. i loved this amp so much that i ended up buying the amp that follows below.

Pass labs 250.8: What can i say here. This is THE BEST STEREO AMP i have ever heard. This amp destroys all the amps i have listed above today to include the pass labs 350.5. It is a refined 350.5 amp. It has more 3d sound which is something the 350.5 lacked. It has a level of detail that i really have never experienced before and the bass was amazing as well. I really thought it was the most complete power amplifier i have ever heard HANDS DOWN. To me, this is a benchmark of an amplifier. This is the amp that others should be judged by. NOTHING is lacking and right now it is the #1 amplifier that i have ever owned.

My current amps are Mcintosh MC601s: i decided to give these 601s a try and they don’t disappoint. They have great detail, HUGE soundstage, MASSIVE power and great midrange/highs. The bass is great, but it is no pass labs 250.8 or 350.5. As far as looks, these are the best looking amps i have ever owned. No contest there. i gotta be honest with you all, i never bought mcintosh monos before because i wasn’t really "wowed" by the mc452, but it could have been also because at that time i was using a processor as a preamp which i no longer do. Today, i own the Mcintosh C1100 2 chassis tube preamp which sounds unbelievable. All the amps i just described above have been amps that i auditioned with the C1100 as a preamp. The MC601s sound great without a doubt, but i will say that if you are looking for THE BEST sound for the money, these would not be it. However, Mcintosh remains UNMATCHED when it comes to looks and also resale value. Every other amp above depreciates much faster than Mcintosh.

That said, my future purchase (when i can find a steal of a deal) will be the Pass labs 350.8. I am tempted to make a preliminary statement which is that i feel this amp could be THE BEST stereo amp under 30k dollars. Again, i will be able to say more and confirm once i own it. I hope this update can help you all in your buying decisions!


128x128jays_audio_lab
jays_audio_lab's avatar
jays_audio_lab OP
5,381 posts
 
Quick impressions of the Alexia :

- wide and deep presentation
- mids are locked dead center even when speakers are not perfectly positioned 
- mid bass is all there unlike most speakers 
- deep muscular bass that makes your chair vibrate when pushed hard 
- warmer sounding than focal scala evo but still contains detail 
- extremely dynamic which almost startles you 
- very "real" sounding when tbe recording calls for it 
- it can present big issues for those of you without a room with sufficient size which allows you to put them 4-5 feet into the room

So this right now is a tough call because on some songs the focal sounds tighter and more controlled and in other songs the Alexia sounds more real and lifelike. Right now I can say it might have to do with the music genre that you listen to. If you want slam and extreme dynamics then Wilson takes it. If you want incredible resolution and tons of detail then focal takes it. 
Tomorrow my shootout will be with all sorts of music so that no speaker is at an advantage. The goal is to make it as fair as possible. 
By the way, I have spoken to Wilson audio in regards to the Alexia 1 and all the comments that people are making about it not being a coherent speaker and their response was that most people don't use the right amps with this speaker. This speaker drops to 1.9 ohms at 83 hz so it's not an easy load at all. This is the reason why the Alexia 2 needed to be more efficient because a lot of people refused to buy the right amps for the Alexia 1.  If I were to give my input, I don't here anything incoherent with it. More to come.
viber6
2,448 posts
 
RIAA,
If you read carefully, I said, "spending big money for poorer real performance." I bet that in your successful career as a financial advisor/manager, you got clients into many good investments that were undervalued so they could later make good profits. The fact is that in audio, there are very few items that are true investments. The only investment value is if they provide long term enjoyment so you don’t care if they depreciate. The challenge is to get maximum enjoyment without blowing too much money. WC has good financial management by buying low, so he can survive another day to go for the next thing, just as an investor tries to buy low so he can preserve his capital. In that respect WC and I are similar. If I do find something for $30,000 that is truly superior, I won’t bother spending (wasting) $10,000 on something else which is merely good, although for $1,600 I got a near new Mytek Brooklyn Amp which beats almost anything I heard at home for much more money. But everyone has practical spending limits on audio in view of all the other pleasures of life. Even Bill Gates doesn’t have enough money for ALL the good causes he would like to support, so he makes his choices.

It is better to engage in productive positive conversation rather than return insults. Please take the hint, and thanks for listening.
riaa_award_collectors_on_facebook's avatar
riaa_award_collectors_on_facebook
981 posts
 

Umm....Not a Financial advisor/manager. I manage millions of dollars of friends/family money for FREE...not as an occupation. Been retired for over a decade (from I/T).

Hard to be positive in regards to your comments cause you just keep beating people over the head with the same redundant crap for almost 2 years now. Its also the reason so many people that USE to be involved in this thread have since moved on. Same ol same ol....Your the expert at everything with no practical use of any of the components mentioned. All you have is theory. You have the wisdom of somebody that has memorized the entire book "Kama Sutra" without ever actually partaking in any of the "events" in real life.

jetter
3,033 posts
 
Well, actually, memorizing the Kama Sutra is a pretty cool trick in itself.
psnyder149's avatar
psnyder149
160 posts
 
re:  Nordost Jumpers

Sorry to jump in a little late on the topic as I've been traveling.  I have had extensive experience with Jumpers using a couple of different Nordost speaker cables and even more when working with another "participant" on this thread who has even higher end Nordost than myself.  

With Nordost, it is absolutely critical that the jumpers are at same or better level than the speaker cables themselves.  I have theories as to why this is, but I could not technically argue them against people on this site that know much more about this than myself.  

What I can say is that I had basic Nordost jumpers and Frey 1 speaker cables (Heimdahl IC) with excellent results.  Which posts were jumped allowed me to slightly adjust tone and "impact" of the system but all ways sounded musical.  When I upgraded my system to all Valhalla 1 the overall sound of the system deteriorated dramatically, even though I preferred some aspects of presentation.  The harshness, or thinness that some people attribute to Nordost was very present.  I tried jumping highs, lows and cross jumping the way that Nordost recommends.  Nothing seemed to help.

I was about to just resell the V1 s but in a last ditch effort, I bought a pair of Reference jumpers.  Instantly, the issues went away.  The overall sound and musicality leapt past the Frey level.  Now all of the detail and clarity that Nordost is known for was matched with bass response, depth and coherence that makes for fantastic, uncolored and unfatiguing listening experience.  Some months later, I had the opportunity to land a pair of Valhalla 1 jumpers so that mains and jumpers were identical.  Although I did not expect that it would or could get better, there was a significant improvement to all aspects of the sound.  Not bad vs. good, but more very good vs better.  Additionally, which posts were jumped became more or less inconsequential.  I have heard from close friends that have Odin 1 and Valhalla 2 speaker cabling and they have had similar results.  

WC, my dealer is a Wilson and a Nordost rep.  They have the same experiences.  Because of the incredible attention placed on time coherence with Wilson, I expect that the sensitivity to the jumpers to be heightened even over my own (ProAc Response 5).   Our friend, who listens to incredibly fast YG speakers has heard a significant improvement from going from Reference to Valhalla 2 jumpers.  

As you know, my system is not nearly at the overall level of what yours is, but my experience is that the better the system, the more important these seemingly unimportant details become.  Again, I can't explain why it is the case, but only that I have found it to be the case in several situations.  I think it is particularly true once you start playing at the V2 and Odin levels.
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