Amp for Dali Hellicon 400 mk2

Dan,
Dali speakers shine with tube gear.A friend of mine has the MS4's with Cary SLI80.Any shows that Dali attend they use tube gear.

ahhh..i see..didnt know that..i should have done more research..i now have a dread2 powering them..still..much better than the other amps..but lacks that spine tingling feeling..the irony is i gave my brother the nad and he is running 800 dollar polk audio spkers and man...like a hand in a glove..jaw dropping clarity and body..we were shocked..his rig is running about 2.5k..im at like 8!!!..and still..on some levels..his sounds better!!..

The Dalis demand a lot of power to control the bass. I'd be concerned about a tube amp having the desired muscle unless you spend big, big bucks.

I've heard them with about five different amps and the bass didn't really clean up until we got to around 200 watts into 8 ohms. The CJ CA200 mentioned earlier is one of the amps that it sounded pretty good with. It sounded even better with a couple of 500 watt amps (Rowlands). With a 100 wpc Primare the bass was loose and bloated.

Those speakers really need a few hundred hours to break in. The ribbon tweeter can be very unforgiving of less than stellar sources, etc. I'm afraid that when you opted for those speakers you upped the anti on the rest of your system.

Dave

ya Dave..thats exactly what i am thinking as well...but..im a bit perplexed as when i had the ati running them i had it bridged to 400 wpc..and on one of the speakers..it blew the mid range drivers??..i was shocked..and diappointed..as..it wasnt playing like crazy loud......because..i have to really turn it up to really feel them....ahhh..its a long road

Damn, I hate stories about blowing drivers. That really surprises me because I was driving them with amps capable of 1000 watts into 4 ohms, with no problemo in a large, well damped room.

When you say "crazy loud" were you sitting there in front of them and actually listening when the driver crapped out?? You shouldn't be turning them way up and listening from another part of the house. You should be able to get 85+dB averages and peaks of say 105 or so without blowing things up. Compressed rock can be played over 90dB averages, generally without harm. Usually a speaker will blow because of a short with power on or underpowered clipping blowing the tweeters. I'm surprised that a speaker of this quality blew at any kind of level that you'd actually listen to.

Dave