ICE Amps for classical music?

Curriemt11- were you able to tame the speakers with the brillance control?

Ait - Yippy yi aye!

"""""In my opinion, they are much more the "straight wire with gain" amplifier than any sort of sound-shaper."""""

You couldn't be more right. Yours post is a great example why there are so many opinions of class D amps.

I too use tubes. They are in my non oversampling DAC. Never would I care to run my ICE amps direct. I prefer the romance of tubes, and the frankness of NOS.

Rleff,

Only to a degree. If I turned the control down far enough to get rid of the brightness, it clearly depressed the upper mids to an unacceptable degree.

I've had quite a number of amps on these speakers, and none have exhibited this behavior to this extent. It may be a matter of semantics, but in my opinion it's the amp that needs 'taming', not the speakers.

I don't want to make too much of this. The problem area is where the load is dropping into the 2-4 ohm range. Speakers with a more reasonable impedance curve might well fare much better, so my experience in this regard must be taken with a very large grain of salt.

Further info: I use a tube preamp (AI Modulus 3A) and Shahinian Hawk speakers.
I suppose this is heresy, but I have found tube amps (such as the VAC or Music Reference which I have used) can be just as grating on the nerves as SS amps. I have not found myself closer to the "real sound" with tubes. My Bedini was "mellow" while my VAC was a bit thin. Both had acceptible (to me) soundstaging and transparency. My Plinius, which I now am using, exhibits some warmth and great detail but sounds more "electronic" than the others I mentioned. Especially on violins and high brass at higher volumes, the amp introduces a touch of a sound which I think can best be described as like that of a whistle. It is neither musical nor natural. The feathery satin upper frequency finish of violins en masse is reproduced by the Plinius to a greater degree than any other amp I have tried; but that featheriness is right in the area where the amp sounds most like transistors and voltage rather than
wood and rosin. I am wondering if your experienceswith class D amps have revealed any greater likelihood that I will hear them as more plastic and steel than good class A or A/B ss or valve amps.

Curriem11, I beg to differ. My speakers are the infamous 1 ohm Scintilla. It matters not how loud I listen to them. Right now they are working in the 70 to 80 decibel range. No one else is in the house.

Ait has demonstrated just how temperamental class D amps are. There are all sorts of components manufactured with the seeming idea of screwing up class D. Now, I don't believe that; it's just that it works out.

My amps NEED SCs devoid of dielectric. Conversely, they NEED iron clad PCs. Those are only 2 rules of many.