Integrated amp for Eggleston Andra II

I can sympathize with you. I use Lamm M2.1 monoblocks with my Andra II speakers, and they too get rather warm. (Not hot thankfully, but they do raise the temperature a few degrees in my non-air conditioned room. (Great in the winter, not so great in the summer!) I too have thought about buying a secondary set of amps for the summertime, but I love the sound of the Lamms so much, that I feel that anything else would just be second best.

As far as recommendations, I would recommend just getting solid state monoblock amps, and keeping the preamp. The tubed preamp should not run that hot, and it means not having to deal with restructuring your stereo system's setup, especially buying a secondary set of speaker cables and/or preamp to amp interconnects. (I assume that your speaker cables are kept short, since you run monoblocks, right? I know I do that.)

As far as a specific recommendation (for solid state monoblocks, as I recommend), I would try something like the Parasound JC-1 monoblocks. They are Powerful, and run in Class AB so they should run fairly cool. You can adjust the biasing so that they run more in Class A, which helps them sound better, but of course that will generate more heat! But it does give you some options depending on the ambient temperature).

Good Luck in your search!

the JC-1s are not all that cool even in the lower (running cooler) biasing position. I mean I definitely feel the need to turn them off completely on hot days. I would maybe try a set of the Bel Canto 1000 watt class D monoblocks. Oh and let us know how you like them too.

Well, I'll defer to Ejlif on the heat generated by the JC-1s, since I have never actually owned them. (I saw and heard them at a dealers, and they did not seem to run all that hot, (warmish yes), but then again, they were in a large air conditioned room, that probably did a better job of cooling than your typical living room would!)

My recommendation then would be to find a good pair of Class AB amps, that aren't heavily biased in Class A (as the JC-1s, or my Lamm M2.1s are). I am not a big fan of the Class D amplifiers myself, but I will admit that they do run very cool. (I heard the Nuforce ref. 9's, and they don't sound all that great, IMHO. However, perhaps the Bel Canto ones suggested by Ejlif are better.) I would definitely audition them prior to purchasing them though.

a quick note on Kurt's initial response to the thread- "...The tubed preamp should not run that hot..". I have owned the Sonic Frontiers Line 3 preamp for 5+ years, and I beg to differ on the heat output- it does put out a lot of heat.