Tubes?

recommend 95dB or higher. This alone will solve all your problems as going from 85dB to 95dB drops your power requirement by TEN TIMES! You can go from using all 300 watts and wishing you had more to being happy as a clam with a 30 watt tube amp.


You ideas are pretty much in line with my mine above

Exactly, he will need at least 35 watts to push a  85db speaker. Trans will have to be high performers =< Beefy>

Keep the 95 ravels', and find a 6550/kt88 which delivers 35+ <clean pure true > watts.
. 
I think its good ss fans are finally waking up to the superior musicality of a tube amperage. 
Its suble, but its * The Real Deal*
ss wattage would fatigue my ears in 1 hour of less. 
My tech guy was working on my Defy and lent me his ss Yamaha, not sure which modle,, old unit,,,lol,, wowo, aftera  few seconds , i put it up,, and suffered w/o music a few more days.
<There is not a  ss amp in the world which could meet my musiacl preference /acceptance standards.>
~~could n't resist, I am the #1 basher of ss labs.~~ 

take any 70 watt ss amp vs my Jadis Defy 70 watter,, HA!, shootout at OK Coral,, ss pants shot down  before he even had a chance to make his draw.

Thanks guys. Great stuff to consider. My last speakers were jbl 250ti's. Accurate? no. Powerful? Oh good grief. The Salons have a beautiful tone and good detail. Not best for powerful rock music, although with clean power they never seem to strain. Perhaps not the best choice but still great speakers overall. Down the rabbit hole for me? Probably. I have 2 JL Audio Fathom 112's on the way. Dave

You could probably find someone to buy the Salons off you for more than enough to get a pair of Ulfberhts, or even Moabs with all Be tweeters, either of which would be at least a match for the Salons in tone and detail, and walk all over them when cranked up good and loud. Especially since they will allow you to run a high quality tube integrated that will walk all over your current Mac amps. Together you will have far better sound, able to play even higher volume, and with money left over in your pocket. Heck the money you are talking about spending on more McIntosh would get you into a new Raven Reflection that will cost less, sound better, and look way, way, way better. https://www.ravenaudio.com/product/reflection-mk2/

Being tube watts it would probably be better than your other choices even if you keep the unsuitably inefficient Revels.

Just sayin.

Hi tobor007

I think the most important decision you need to make is between quality or quantity. 

“Tube watts were louder than solid state watts”, general statements like that scare me and can be misleading. There are too many other factors and variables that also need to be taken into consideration before making a blanket statement like that. 

Like everything else, there are positive and negative aspects for everything in audio that have to be considered. Some of the negative attributes that tubes have is warmup time. From the time you turn on the piece, it will take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours or maybe more until that piece sounds it’s best. You also don’t want to leave a tube product on 24/7 like you can with a solid state piece. Then you are going to probably want to change the factory tubes to some vintage nos (new old stock) tubes from the 1950’s or 60’s as these can transform a piece of gear tremendously. The nos tubes that are the really good ones like the Telefunkens, Mullard, Amperex, Siemens, Tungsol ect are very expensive and getting harder and harder to find. As the supply diminishes, the cost will continue to rise. The benefits of tubes, to mention just a few, would be accuracy of timbre and tonal beauty, more air and three dimensionallity around the instruments and better soundstage (sometimes).

Your comment on the amps never running out of power tells me you may want to try a good tube preamp and keep your solid state amps. You may find that this gives you the best of both worlds. That’s what I do and I love it. If you decide to give that a try I would need to know your budget and whether you prefer brand new or used before I could make any recommendations (assuming you would want me to). 

Your speakers are are very power hungry as a friend of mine has a high end stereo store and used to sell that speaker so I’ve heard them many times and I’m very familiar with them. I used to have a Mac C52 solid state preamp which was good (not great) and when I replaced it with a PS Audio BHK Signature preamp, which sold for $1000.00 less and put some nos Telefunkens from the early 60’s in it’s place was so much more musical it wasn’t even funny. The tonality was gorgeous and the accuracy of timbre was much better. For a retail price of $5995.00 it’s a pretty good value compared to the prices of some of this other stuff out there. Those nos tubes made all the difference in the world. Best of luck.

Scot