Amps for KEF Blade 2

I've been planning for Blade 2s when I consolidate my two setups.  I plan to keep either the new Ayre VX-5 Twenty (175@8Ω, 350@4Ω) or the Parasound JC1 monoblocks (400@8Ω, 800@Ω) and use an integrated for the LS50s.  Will either of those amps have trouble driving Blade 2s?  I use the VX-5 with a KX-5 Twenty preamp and the JC 1s with a JC 2 BP if that's relevant.

db

e91811,

It has been a year since the last post here. I was wondering how you liked the AHB2 with your Blade 2? What is the rest of your system?

I am all over the map on DAC | Pre | Amp choices for the Blades (for my living room). I am going to try and listen to the Theta Prometheus, Bryston 7BSST3, and the AHB2 with the Blades . If I go this route I am thinking of something like a Briscati M12 (includes DAC + analog volume + soon to be Roon Ready via ethernet).

The other option which I think will definitely work great is getting high quality separates for the Blades. However, there will be a substantial increase in costs doing this. Your approach of using the AHB2 is something I thought might be a way to get around high cost amps for the Blades.

When I auditioned the Blade 2, it was paired with a Chord SPM 5000 and did it quite well.  If you want an amp stable to 1 ohm, you can look at the Electrocompaniet Nemo monoblocks.   Those can drive anything you can throw at it.

I did see some of the specs on their website and they do specify increasing power output at 3 ohm load, which indicates amplifier design with current capability in mind.

While the the power output isn't able to drive the speaker to its max SPL, my take being that you'll give up before either amp or speaker do.

Overall it sounds as if you have a capable partner. I brought up some of those ASP1000 class D amps as they doubled output going from 8 to 4 ohm impedance, but quickly fell apart anywhere below that. The speaker in question was the Revel Salon2, which is also current happy design with lower efficiency in comparison to the B2. So you really want to get a clear answer if the design can dip to 3 ohm or even 2 ohm. Which is was you do have with your current amp.
 

Thanks mmeysarosh for the informative post. I decided to contact Benchmark about their AHB2 amps driving the KEF B2s and this is what they wrote back to me:

"This is from engineering. This is actually a very easy speaker to drive in mono mode. It is a nice design with well-controlled impedance curves. There will be 6.0 dB more headroom in mono mode with this speaker. The AHB2 will have current to spare when driving this speaker in mono.

Max SPL in mono is 115.9 dB (ignoring power compression)
Max SPL in Stereo is 110.1 dB (ignoring power compression)

Typically you will need to subtract a dB or 2 to account for power compression."

It’s been a very long time since I took college physics so I can’t say I thorougly understand everything that the both of you wrote, however, I do understand "current to spare"! In conclusion, I’m still not sure if the B2s are easier to drive than the original Blades but, it appears my amps will be able to handle the B2s so I suppose I should be satisfied with that answer.

Stereophile has a full set of measurements on the Blade 2 and it primarily shows the speaker requiring full 4 ohm stability with an ability to be fully stable to a 3.2 ohm load. This will simply require an amplifier with adequate current capability. As an example, some of the older ASP1000 based amps did poorly with lower lower impedance speakers than their ASP500 counterparts on some speaker models. The reason was due to the first generation higher power amplifier apparently being less comfortable in dropping below 4 ohm than its lower specified counterpart.

In terms of the Rowland, it does specify near doubling of output at half impedance with the 725 mono blocks as compared to the 625. Most of this load is below 200hz and rises to 6 ohm nominal above it. This could explain the spotlighting phenomenon since we know the B2 goes as low as 3.2 ohm in this area. My suggestion is to try and mate amplifiers that offer 2 ohm stable output in order to prevent the amplifier going anywhere near its potential current reserve. One suggestion would be some of the Pass Labs models, as some are capable of power into 2 ohm loads without much stress. This factor is tough to know until you get the amp on the bench. Even then, there is something to be said about overall synergy.