Tube amp for "difficult" speakers,,,

I dont have personal experience with your speakers but I have pretty inefficent speakers myself and have owned the Rm9 (not special edition) and Vac ren 70/70 both great amps but were a little lifless compared to the manleys my experience is that there is no shortcut you need alot of output tubes and massive transformers( I also owned joule grand marquis.) If you are moving from solid state I think the others will leave you a little underwhelmed unless you get a more efficent pair of speakers. But no doubt a tube amp is the way to go!

The Music Reference RM9SE might work as it puts out 200 watts into 4ohms (from the 8 ohm tap on the amp), versus the 65 watts of the RM9 MKII. While it doesn't double power like an SS, it is a tube amp capable of lot's of power into low impedances compared with traditional tube amps. Another tube amp that I think would do the job would be a CAT JL2 - talk about BIG transformers... A tube amp won't do the bass quite like SS does, but I think a worthwhile tradeoff (that you keep to a minimum)with tube amps like the one's mentioned, including the large Manley's.

I used to love Dynaudio sound, from Sonus Faber EA1/Extrema to Dyn C5, but I do believe Esotar 1 is no longer the king it used to be 10 years ago. That's the reason I moved away from Dyn C5, same reason that older gentleman moved away from Consequence. He owns a stereo business and starts importing Eben which has a ribbon tweeter.

Like most inefficient speakers, you need tons of power to have the same dynamic range of more efficient speakers. I am not talking about just playing loud, I am talking about the "jump factor". If you have ever heard a horn system, you will notice how natural the music is, how easily each musical note just flows out without strain, how dynamic contrast is so vivid and relax you don't need to crank up the volume to hear it. so since owning Extrema and C5 for 5+ years total, I decided to go back to more efficient speakers.

I haven't heard the latest Merlin VSM, I did own the VSM SE for a short time. Still using Esotar which you like, they are significantly more efficient and dynamic. if your room size is not huge, VSM MX or whatever version now might work for you both sound and money wise.

I still can't remember the name of that medium power tube amp, but I don't think you should bother trying to find one as I have never seen on goes up for sale on audiogon except the one from the same gentleman who eventually gave up and sold both his amp and Consequence.

If you ar considering changing speakers, I'll second the Merlins (I own the VSM-MXe)which suit my taste to a T; 30 watts is enough for them to be loud and dynamic - The Ars Sonum 30 watt integrated that Bobby at Merlin is importing makes fo a wonderful pairing. But, that is a different strategy all together.