"Actually the mbls are not that hard to drive. 200 watts is plenty of power in most rooms."
My understanding is the 101s are capable of prodigious bass and are designed to go into larger rooms to deliver their full potential.
I would expect that a tube amp might not inherently optimally drive the mbls to their max in respect to bass levels due to load, but, in many cases with most rooms, assuming not overtly large, perhaps that could be a non-issue/not matter. And/or perhaps there are ways to tweak impedance matching to alleviate any issues a tube amp might encounter relative to SS driving mbls.
I could see where if maybe if a tube amp were not delivering the meat in the bass as well as a suitable SS amp might enable them to, the other common sonic attributes of the tube amplification might help to still achieve a way above average listening experience with adequate bass for most music in rooms more towards the smaller end for use with 101s. They are in many ways SOTA speakers after all, so they should sound really really good no matter what (with proper setup). The question is always, can they sound better?
OR maybe I am just overestimating how difficult a load mbl 101s would be. I conclude that more by inference based on the fact mbl builds some very beefy SS amps to drive their speakers in the demos I have heard and they just look like they might be a tough load in perhaps some very unique ways given the radical design?
I guess some specs on the mbl 101 load and how that matches to tube amplification would help shed some light.
Also whenever bass levels are in doubt due to amplification and/or other factors, a well integrated sub can usually be made to fill in whatever might be missing, even with mbl I suppose.
Also back to the OPs original inquiry regarding bi-amping, that would involve not using the tube amp for the bass to much greater extent. There would still be a challenge to address I would expect in terms of getting a tube and SS amp (generally different impedance characteristics) to balance properly in a bi-amp scenario. Probably doable, but a challengethat would be addressed through the crossover implementation somehow I would expect. It would surprise me if the internal crossover would handle bi-amping with a tube and SS amp optimally out of the box, but hey you never know what something will sound like usually until you actually try and hear it.
Nsirkin did indicate that his experiment with tube/ss biamping was brief, so I would have to assume that it did not pan out as worth it, at least in his case, so not a good omen there.
My understanding is the 101s are capable of prodigious bass and are designed to go into larger rooms to deliver their full potential.
I would expect that a tube amp might not inherently optimally drive the mbls to their max in respect to bass levels due to load, but, in many cases with most rooms, assuming not overtly large, perhaps that could be a non-issue/not matter. And/or perhaps there are ways to tweak impedance matching to alleviate any issues a tube amp might encounter relative to SS driving mbls.
I could see where if maybe if a tube amp were not delivering the meat in the bass as well as a suitable SS amp might enable them to, the other common sonic attributes of the tube amplification might help to still achieve a way above average listening experience with adequate bass for most music in rooms more towards the smaller end for use with 101s. They are in many ways SOTA speakers after all, so they should sound really really good no matter what (with proper setup). The question is always, can they sound better?
OR maybe I am just overestimating how difficult a load mbl 101s would be. I conclude that more by inference based on the fact mbl builds some very beefy SS amps to drive their speakers in the demos I have heard and they just look like they might be a tough load in perhaps some very unique ways given the radical design?
I guess some specs on the mbl 101 load and how that matches to tube amplification would help shed some light.
Also whenever bass levels are in doubt due to amplification and/or other factors, a well integrated sub can usually be made to fill in whatever might be missing, even with mbl I suppose.
Also back to the OPs original inquiry regarding bi-amping, that would involve not using the tube amp for the bass to much greater extent. There would still be a challenge to address I would expect in terms of getting a tube and SS amp (generally different impedance characteristics) to balance properly in a bi-amp scenario. Probably doable, but a challengethat would be addressed through the crossover implementation somehow I would expect. It would surprise me if the internal crossover would handle bi-amping with a tube and SS amp optimally out of the box, but hey you never know what something will sound like usually until you actually try and hear it.
Nsirkin did indicate that his experiment with tube/ss biamping was brief, so I would have to assume that it did not pan out as worth it, at least in his case, so not a good omen there.