Amp for Martin logan CLS Originals

VTL or Manley monoblocks will drive these wild. I cannot imagine driving this speaker with anything but tubes. They are too revealing and tubes just make them sing. Long interconnects to monoblocks, short speaker wire runs.

Halcro,

"To this day, there are things that the original CLS speakers could do that I've never heard bettered by ANY speakers anywhere."

I could not agree with you more! I dont't believe they are the best speaker in existence, just one of the best. Frequency extremes may be a problem, lower octaves can be supplemented with a lightening fast sub if you can find one that will keep up with the el stats. However, at the price they go in the used market + cost of replacing panels you will be hard pressed to find a better loudspeaker, nothing even comes close in my opinion. CLS overbuilt originals are something special.

I have heard them extensively, driven with a HK Citation XX. This amp is unattainable, for those that do not know about it, it was an amp originally designed for the president of the company in a virtually limitless budget project. only a few had access to it, namely the executives of HK. Oh yeah and it was brought to earth by Dr. Matti Otala the guy that discovered transient intermodulation distortion. Let's keep it simple and just call it audio-un-obtanious. It was rated conservatively @ 250 watt into 8 ohms and drove the speakers absolutely insane. I have heard the same system driven by a pair of 200 watt heavily modified Bogen mono block amps powered by some monster 8714 tubes. It was like heaven on earth..yeah the audience sounded like it was behind me as did the clinking tea cups in Jazz at the pawnshop.

I am no expert, and I know that for some reason 250 watts is different on each amplifier, but I thought an amp like the 200+ watt Macs, Levinson, or Citation 7.1 might drive the CLS. Very interested in hearing from you guys on this, please keep posting.

I have tried a wide variety of solid state amplifiers with the original CLS and none of them came close to the performance of tubes. 100 watt tube monos are ideal. I had great success with Quicksilver, VTL and Audio Research.

I've tried them with amps 100W and up from VTL, Threshold, and Pass Labs with excellent results. My personal preference are with the Audio Research tube amps.

I agree with Reylon, the Macs is not a favorable match for the CLS.

Hello,

I had the CLS2Z for about four years. Most of that time I drove them with an ARC VT130. I also tried the Pass Alpha 100 watt mono-block and thought that worked extremely well with the CLS2Z. One thing to remember regarding usage of tube amps, because of the difficult load they put on the partnering amp, they eat through output tubes real quick.

I find it funny (odd) that the bass is an area of performance that the CLS got criticized for by most people, and in a certain aspect of bass performance I believe rightly so, but at the same time, I always felt that the bass that was there was some of the most detailed, quickest, transparent bass I've yet to hear. I think that revealing nature of the CLS bass performance was the hardest thing for me to get past when moving on to other speakers.

best,
Tom