Recommend me a Class A Integrated Amp (or sound like Class A amp)
I have been rocking a Cabasse Riga setup with a Sony TA-A1ES (a heavily biased Class A design outputting first 15 watts as Class A). I absolutely love the clarity and natural sound of it. I’ve decided to keep to Class A to upgrade if possible because the Riga does not need a lot of juice to drive.
Accuphase Class As are eye-watering expensive in my country, but thankfully Esoteric prices their Class A F-03A at much more reasonable $8600 USD. Luxman unfortunately has stopped producing Class As, so they are out of equation and besides strangely they are more expensive than Esoteric in my country. Pass Labs, well, way out of my budget.
So, for around $8600 USD or less what are my other options if I want a similar sound to Class A without going down the tube route?
I’ve heard the new HifiRose RA180 sounds quite class A like. And I think the Yamaha AS series sound quite close as well. Any more options should I consider? The pricing of other brands should be similar to US.
if the sony ta1 1 es is doing the job, why upgrade? it is one of the true sleepers out there, under the radar, but delivering the sound quality of units many times its cost, absolutely superb sounding amp, solid and impactful yet utterly liquid to beat it you will need to spend much much more $ and even then the s-q improvement will be fairly marginal |
+1 @jjss49 A typical question worth posing here is what kind of sound characteristics are you looking for? Why is an amplifier change the way to get there? $8600 or less can certainly get you Pass Labs stuff. Don't know why you're saying it's way out of your budget. But, again, gear changing may not be the answer to the question you're posing, unless you just want to buy more stuff, which happens around here, occasionally. |
I guess I just want to buy more stuff or scratch that itch of wanting the best gear? Anyway, I like my sound to be as realistic and pure as possible but still having a lot of liveliness and excitement. I listen to a lot of modern female vocals and classical music. Two speakers I'm considering in my upgrade path: Cabasse Baltic and Yamaha NS-3000. These speakers are balanced, neutral, and very fast. Pass Labs stuff in my city are very expensive. Teac, Esoteric, Yamaha, and Plinius stuff are quite a bit more cheaper so I am heavily leaning towards these 4 brands.
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part of the fun of the hobby is the scratch the itch, try new stuff we think is better. i would say though, knowing the ta1 1es very very well (i have one) that that amp is better than the speakers you currently have and mentioned you would try that said, the next level of amplifier quality may be obtained by going with a luxman class a unit, a gryphon, a modern accuphase or if obtainable, a belles sa30 class a unit (and of course class a pass) other one to consider is agd audion |
