Wilson Sophia2s demand better than AYRE V5xe, so..

Two comments, take them for what they are worth:

1) Spend the $50 on Jim Smith's new book. I would be willing to bet that you will find what you are looking for with a bit of tweaking rather than buying a new amp. (I'm sure that MusicSlug's perceptive question about speaker break in would be covered in the book.)

2) If after going through the book, make sure that you audition whatever amp you are considering *in home*, *in your system*. That's the only way you are going to know if the new amp will give you what you are looking for. It may turn out that the problem isn't the amp at all, but any one of the other components in your system (including the cables, which by all rights should cost less than an amp, but probably don't).

Good luck in your search for better sound!

i would look into the lamms as well. These have always been a good synergy with wilson speakers.

My local high end shop has an open house every year. In Oct. 2006 the system that blew me away was a a SME turntable driving a VTL signal chain with VTL reference monoblocks driving a pair of Wilson Alexandria V2s. The sound was phenomenal to the point of causing sane men to consider a second mortgage to put this system in their house. This past April I went again, and this time the Wilson MAXX's were being driven by a stack of the new Ayres that are carved out of solid billets of aluminum. Although they sounded excellent by most standards, the VTLs of the year before totally spoiled me. The Ayre chain sounded like electronically reproduced music. I could go home to my much cheaper system at home and not feel like I was missing a whole lot. The VTL chain from the year before made me forget all about the equipment; my jaw was too busy dropping because it sounded like the Duke Ellington big band was in the listening room.

I don't know how much of a house sound VTL has, and the top end monoblocks (such as the Siegfried) have a lot of solid state logic controlling and guiding the tube circuits to extend their linearity, speed, and consistency, but there are currently some high powered VTL monoblocks in the A-gon classifieds in the $5K range that should make your Sophias get up and sing, bark, and boogie. If you could find something from VTL's Reference line on the used market at your target price ($10K), I don't think you would regret it or want to move on to something else for a long time.

Johny,
please don't take this the wrong way, but how can you be sure that what you heard you can attirbute to the amps and not to the speakers. not defending Ayre in any way, but just curious. Because you did hear different speakers with different amps. let's not forget that the Alexandrias cost about 3 times as much as Maxx? is this even a valid comparison? You have heard 2 different systems 6 months apart.

Besides the fact that sonic memory is short, these were totally different system. Were they even in the same room?

Hmm...not a real fair comparison, to say the least.

Johnnyb53,

I agree with you. Hearing Wilson on very good tube gear will leave a lasting impression. VTL has a lot of synergy with Wilson. I can tell you that Ayre is not the greatest match with any wilson speaker. I tried my MXR with wilson and it was to much of a good thing.