Best amps for rock and heavy metal

No one does bass slam like Krell. Levinson is awesome too, but much darker sounding-not mention overpriced. If your doing alot of this type of music you owe it to yourself to listen to Krell. I have had a krell for years and it did well for me when I listened to more rock. I toned it down now with some tube front end pieces, but go all SS and consider Krell.

"best" is such a subjective term. But, I can tell you from personal experience that Audio Research (specifically the 150.2 and 300.2); classe, mcintosh, sim audio, ayre all do rock well. How well they perform will depend on many factors including your room, the preamp matched with the amp, speakers, cables, and associated sources.

Although I understand that you like your speaker very much, I don't think so that it with two 6.5 woofers is a suitable to playback for such a music you like. Whatever amplifier you use. 1027be with a nice tube amplifier is suit for chamber music and similar small scale music. For that music you like I would go for a speaker with 10 inch woofer to have the omph and bass slam. An old JBL, for example, for me the quentessential speaker for rock and metal. Taking into account global warming, I would not buy any classA heavyweight amplifier. A nuforce or similar class D amp with a PS audio powerplant does all the trick one needs, and offer more chance for the survival of the next generation of human beings.

I have to agree with the others above about your speakers .
I have owned two pairs of JM Labs Electra speakers and could not get them to sound good with rock music . Many people explained the problem to be the small bass drivers .
I was using a 200w/ch SS midfi amp .
I have auditioned them with some highend SS amps such as Levinson , McIntosh , Plinius , Classe and MF . None helped .
If I was looking for a rock speaker , I would look for something with a big fast woofer for impact and a soft tweeter (non metalic) to help with the edgy highs . I would also introduce some tubes in the mix to help tame the highs . I chose a tubed CDP and it worked quite well .

It has been a couple of months now , have you had any success with your quest ?

Good luck.

I play a fair amount of metal and have a lot of friends who play in metal bands too. But my system is all tube. My speakers are fairly efficient (97 db) and they go to 20 Hz, so with 60 watts I can play any volume I want and shake the house at the same time.

At work (Atma-Sphere) we have a number of LPs that get used a bass references (see http://www.atma-sphere.com/awards/bya/index.html). One of them (Zoon, Fields of Nephalim) has enough bass to shut most systems down at the 'proper' volumes. Side 3, the side opposite the etched side of the LP has some particularly awesome material that makes you shiver :)

I find that the powerhouse transistor amps can't make the bass impact right. You really need tubes for that!