Amp suggestion for Merlin TSM speakers


Decided to keep my Merlins and upgrade power. Presently using a Billie amp, and a Parasound as a preamp. Would like to stick with tubes (integrated or not), but I'm not sure what power would be best to drive the Merlins. Thoughts?

 

troutbum

A buddy of mine recently passed away and we are liquidating his audio system. Bobby’s last Black magic VSM MXM with master Bam and an Ars Sonum Filarmonia integrated as recommended by Bobby. 
For a medium sized room this is a great combo. Liquidating for the family and the combo will be very reasonable. 

 I heard them  a few years back being driven by a Rogue tube integrated. The sound was beautiful.

I second the VTA/Tubes4hifi amps. Currently running twin M-125 monoblocks and their SP-14 preamp. I built the amp kits and had them build the preamp while I was in the process. Very rewarding listening to something you had a hand in bringing to life, but don't kid yourself, these are solid, powerful and musical regardless of who built them. I'm extremely satisfied with the investment, getting ~125 watts of tube power from each of these is awesome. 

Good move hanging on to those speakers.  You’ll have to spend a lot more to do better.  I had two pairs of TSM’s, sold one, and had to replace them with $7k monitors for a marked improvement.  But still have my Black Magic version, so I’ve tried several different types of electronics.   First, they sound best with tubes.  Not sure what version you have but the recent versions will sound better than the older versions with Solid State.  But again, best to stick with tubes.  Depending on room size and how loud you listen, you can get by with 20-25 tube watts.  I like them best with my Atma-Sphere S-30 OTL tube amp (30 watts) but the rooms I used them in were small to medium sized.  Even in a larger room though 50-60 tube watts should be plenty of power.  As already mentioned they sound very nice with EL34 tubes in triode. They did very nice with my Conrad Johnson mono blocks (60 watts of EL34 triode power) in a 16x24 room. Whatever electronics you decide on the Merlin’s will continue to scale up with better electronics. I also found that they sound best with Cardas or Audience cables and again, they will continue to scale up with good cables.

@ht_fan  "Every time I heard the Merlins they were on Joule electronics and sounded amazing with them!"

 

Yes, that is what I heard them with as well and with the same result.