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ICE Amps for classical music?

I listen to classical orchestral music at heavy volume. I detest reproduced music for always sounding more or less electronic and not acoustic. Real music is beautiful in a way reproduced music--so far at least-- never is. I have become curious about Wyred4sound amps because of low price and high watts. I am wondering if any of you "mostly classical" listeners have heard these amps and feel they do no more damage to music than amps which are NOT ICE amps. I am using a Plinius SA100 now and have used a VAC 100/100,
a Bedini Classic 100/100, a Music Reference RM-9, and other tube and solid state amps. They all had their pluses and minuses, of course, but for least electronic, clearly the Bedini was the winner. So what about ICE amps?
rpfef
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,336 posts
 
"Mapman,

What are you using for speakers and pre into the Bel canto's."

Pre-amp is Audio Research sp16.

Speakers are OHM Walsh 5 Series 3, OHM 100 Series 3, OHM L and Dynaudio Contour 1.3 mkii.

All are shown in my system listing.

Each speaker pair is in a different room connected to the same core electronics (including Bel canto Ref1000 mkii mono blocks) via in-wall wiring that I had run when the house was built. I use a Niles speaker switch off the monoblocks to switch individual speaker pairs/rooms on and off as needed.

I used to have a pair of larger maggies in my system for years. The OHM Walsh 5s replaced those in my larger room. I would really like to hear those again now using the Bel Cantos. I used a 360w/ch Carver m4.0t with the Maggies back then an that was not a bad combo. The carver amp did not cut it with the OHM Walshes though. Not a lot of current and fairly low damping factor despite plenty of watts led to a comparably thin sound with those.
muralman1
1,527 posts
 
I would urge all class D owners to find an AN DAC to try. My class D set up spits out all oversampling or up-sampling players. I haven't had one here that doesn't fall far short of a 1-sampling player or DAC.
rx8man's avatar
rx8man
1,483 posts
 
I've been more than quite musically satisfied (including a dozen or so listeners) with my AD1865N 1.0 NOS Dac to 6SN7-based TRL pre into NuForce monos, tons of reserve dynamics, liquid warmth and huge open staging.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,336 posts
 
I'm very happy with the mhdt DACs as well. These also do no upsampling.

I do not regard up-sampling as categorically bad however. It can be hit or miss depending on how done like most things.
muralman1
1,527 posts
 
One last caveat...... I don't know about any other NOS DACs, but Audio Note DACs have the worst diodes, and that goes for all their models. Both my aged PSA Lambda transport and my Audio Note DAC got new high efficiency fast recovery diodes. The model of diode is BYW80200 STMicroelectronics.

This upgrade must not be dismissed out of hand. That one change opens the gates for for all the information, far more than otherwise.
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