Wilson Alexia 2

Please no Mcintosh.

+1

The ARC Ref 160 monos, ARC power supplies are monsters that enable the amps to grab and slam the bottom end as well as anything I have heard to date.

With high output impedance of .7ohm of the Ref-160’s into the Alexia’s .9ohm epdr bass they may sound good.
But surely not against the D’Agostino Momentum S250, or even a Gryphon Antilleon in the bass with these Alexia’s.

Stereophile:
The Audio Research Reference 160M’s measured performance appears to be affected by the design team’s decision not to use a lot of loop negative feedback. It will offer relatively high levels of low-order harmonic distortion when the load impedance is less than the nominal output transformer tap.

Cheers George

Don't know how old this is, but I've been able to hear ARC, D'Agostino, Parasound, Ayre and Luxman with Wilsons.

ARC and Parasound were meh in very similar ways.

D'Agostino, Ayre and Luxman are my happy place.

I heard that Alexia's pair very well with Constellation Audio

George:
In my home, the only difference in bass response between the Dag Momentum S250 and the Audio Research amps was the quality of the bass, not the depth or slam. The quality of ss and tube bass are quite different as is the midrange---but re slam--I could not tell the difference nor could an experienced recording engineer who sat with me during the evaluation. Stereophile measurements are important-but more important is what you hear when you hook things up. That being said, as I've said many times on this forum, the Dag amps are great and would be my solid state choice for Wilson.

George:
In my home, the only difference in bass response between the Dag Momentum S250 and the Audio Research amps was the quality of the bass

That will be the output impedance of the ARC being 0.7ohm and the D’Ago being 0.2ohm this is 3 x the damping factor in favor of the D’Ago, the Gryphon is 0.02ohm 10 x better again than the D’Ago, and with even more current available.
The bass of the Alexia which is at it’s worse .9ohm epdr.
That’s why they’re so hard to drive to their best in the bass.

All this is reflected in what the reviewer and tester found with the D’Ago

Overall, the Momentum’s sonic personality, its high-frequency transients somewhat more relaxed, its bass performance ever so slightly less muscular

The output impedance was moderately high for a solid-state design, at 0.21 ohm at 20Hz and 2kHz

And that was on the Wilson Alexandria XLF’s
https://www.stereophile.com/images/113Walexfig1.jpg way easier to drive than the Alexia’s in the bass https://www.stereophile.com/images/1213Walexfig01.jpg

Cheers George