Tubes and less sensitive speakers


I love the sound of tube amps but I use Maggie 3.7's.  I have tried  an 45 watt tube amp  and while I loved the clarity of midrange, I missed the low end slam, even with a sub.  Is there a tube amp out there that matches well with Magnepans?  I am using the Hegel H360 and a friend recommended Coda high current amps but I still am thinking tubes.

boxcarman

I'm very familiar with Maggie 3.6s. I would not recommend a tube amp for these. Although some of the bigger powerhouses sound good but with lots of heat and heft. Your Hegel is probably a decent amp.  I would add a tube pre-amp, a good one. 

If I was you I’d strongly consider Atmasphere’s GaN amp (no affiliation with the company BTW).  You’ll get a lot of the tube sound with solid state bass control and none of the tube hassle, heat, or expense.  I think you can even do a trial period with them, which would seem to be a no brainer to me.  Put a good tube pre in front of it and that could be a magical combo.  That’s what I’d do anyway FWIW.  Best of luck. 

@boxcarman Magnepans are typically very inefficient and require high current amps to get the best out of them.  This is why most amp recommendations for Maggies are on the solid state side.  Not to say there aren’t tube amps out there that sound good with them (I will differ to @atmasphere as more of an expert on that subject). 

There are a lot of older threads on Audiogon that go into this in greater detail.  I’d search through them and spend some time reading.

@russ69 does have a good suggestion on using a tube preamp with a solid state amp or even a hybrid amp with a tube input section, to keep the tube sound in the mix.

... my 2 cents....

Magnepans are typically very inefficient and require high current amps to get the best out of them. 

@jeffbij Just so you know, this statement is false. 

To understand why the first thing you need to know is how current plays out in a speaker like this, which is a fairly resistive four Ohms without odd phase angles.

To make 200 Watts into that speaker you need an amp that can make just a tiny bit over 7 Amps. As you probably know, in the scheme of solid state amps that's not a lot of current.

A 'high current' amp is probably called that because it can double power into 4 Ohms from 8 and maybe again from 4 Ohms down to 2 Ohms. But the Maggies really don't require an amp that can drive 2 Ohms with double the power. They only require that the amp make power into 4 Ohms and can do it in such a way that very minor variations in impedance don't result in variations in output.

Many so-called 'high current' amps advertise a current rating that doesn't square with the power ratings they claim; IOW the 'current' stated is often far more than the amp could ever produce. That is because that rating is the amount of current that would flow for 10milliseconds if the power supply were shorted out. Its not anything to do with the power the amp can make.

Since the speakers don't have a box, they don't have the same sort of resonance that requires a low output impedance to control them, even in the bass. They just need the amp to be able to make the power.

It is true Maggies don't seem to be very efficient. But since they behave as a line source, you really have to add about 6dB to their measurement to understand what is going on. If you've been around a set of Maggies, you may have noticed that they sound just as loud ten feet away as they do when you are only a foot away. That is because at a distance, more of the output of the speaker is reaching your ears while when close up it does not. The same is true of a microphone placed 1 meter from them.

So this means the speaker really is more sensitive than the rating suggests. The model 2.7i for example is similar to an 8 Ohm box speaker of 89dB or a 4 Ohm speaker that is 92dB.

Crazy Suggestion since they are hard to find and long out of production but perhaps the 400 watt Melos monoblocks(triode output). They easily put out 400 watts(under rated, especially earlier versions) with a relatively high damping factor too(20 if I recall). The big problem is taking care of them and rare tubes(EL519).