Advice people with lamm amp experience

Disclaimer - Let me start by letting you know that I'm a Lamm dealer since 1999. I am biased towards Lamm equipment to the point that it's the only electronics that we sell.

The newer M1.2 & M2.2 models have superior qualities to the earlier ones. More transparent, little more dynamic, with a deeper more refined bass. I still find them as the best of their kind. The next real step up is to move to one of their tube amplifiers but that all depends on the rest of your system which I know nothing about.

What kind of sound you like? and which speakers/and other associated gear are you using?

I too love the Lamm amplifier's sound.
(I use the 200 wpc M2.1 hybrid monoblock amps.)
A couple of my friends use the successor to my M2.1, the 220 wpc M2.2
monoblock amps.
(They sound slightly more transparent and have a more extended treble
response. IMHO the bass is almost the same, just slightly faster.)

If you can afford them, the 110 wpc M1.2 reference monoblocks are what
you should buy, IMHO.

One thing you should do, even for your M1.1s, is replace the stock
Sovtek tubes with some NOS tubes. (Using NOS tubes helps to close the
gap between the older units and the newer units.) A big step up is to
something like the Amperex Orange Globe 6dj8 tubes, which are relatively
inexpensive,. (I use the Amperex pinched waist 6922 tubes, but they are
really expensive.)

My two cents worth anyway.

SungChung, my advice to you is to keep what you have. You stated that you really love the amps, why are you in such a hurry to mess with a known-good setup?

IMHO, far too many of our brethren spend an inordinate amount of time chasing the holy grail of "perfect sound" via euipment "rolling". Please take a moment and think very hard about what you are planning to do.

As an aside, have you done everything reasonably possible to assure that your speaker/room interaction is as good as it can be? In many cases, folks are more than willing to jump on the "latest and greatest" piece of gear when they have not pursued improving their current setup.

I can tell you, without a doubt, that optimizing your speaker/room interaction will pay MUCH bigger dividends than would an equipment swap. And it is almost always much less expensive than traveling the constant equipment upgrade path...

-RW-

RW,
Good advice, if very happy with your current Lamm amplifier why change? It seems a large degree of audiophile angst is due to not leaving well enough alone and just appreciating/enjoying your music. Fine tune what you have and optimize your current system.

I owned the M1.1s and they were among the most musical gear I have ever owned, with a smooth warm midrange and big full sounding bass. Unfortunately, they were also a bit dark tonally, resolution was just ok compared to others in the price range, and the upper frequencies were noticeably rolled off. They were like comfort food, warm and rich with lots of body. They never wavered or sounded hard, from low volumes up until they reached their power limit which occurred at a volume I rarely got to. I sold them to move to Clayton Class A SS amps with more power. To me, the Claytons sound better with my speakers than the M1.1s, but if the M1.2s do improve on the M1.1's high frequency extension, resolution, bass depth and definition, then they would certainly on my list of amps I could live with.

System synergy is critical. I believe your question may be anemic in that without knowing what other system components you have, we'd all be shooting in the dark. What else do you have?

So, what did you finally decide?