Pass Labs amps and Avantgarde speakers

I tried a 10 watt amp and I have to say... folks who use less than 20 watts for Duo's are simply not doing them justice. They send very anemic and simply cannot keep up and higher volumes such as electronic music, rock, or movies.

10 watts is more than enough power for any Avantgarde speaker. The meters of my Accuphase A-65 power amp (which are very accurate) show that very often I use less than 0.01 watts, i.e. less than a hundredth of a watt. This is actually the problem, very many amps are not design to play music properly in the centi or milli-watt regimes. It is like expecting a car to operate at optimal parameters when driving it between 0.05 and 0.5 miles per hour.

I agree with Nvp, with this speaker you're using mere fractions of a watt the
vast majority of the time. The quality of the first watt is what you hear.
Preference is of course subjective taste. Chadeffect owns this brand's Trio
speaker and has used many different amplifiers and chose the 2 watt
Yamamoto 45 tube SET. Does that mean it's better than the Pass amp? No,
it a matter of individual preference and desired goals/ sound . I'd probably
prefer the Yamamoto over the Pass amplifier but naturally there are others
who would choose the Pass, it just depends.
Charles,

I would definitely use a small SET tube amp on those speakers.

To say that one needs 20 wpc on 107dB sensitive Duos is...misinformed. I can run mine on 3.5 wpc 2A3 amps with plenty of headroom; it's just that qualitatively the Lamms are the best I've heard to date, at 18 wpc.

I agree that with AG Duo's it is fractions of a Watt that are required in most situations. I have Duo Omegas and using an Atmasphere S30 OTL amp. This is fed directly from a Berkeley Alpha DAC. With the Atmasphere you can remove the driver tubes to reduce max power. With 5 tubes each side you get around 35W. The amp has an output dial that can show power per channel - at deafening levels the meter is barely moving so I reckon well less that half a Watt!

I have tried a number of amplifiers with the Duo's and all have been able to deliver excellent results, so I would expect the Pass amps to sound really good.