An Amplifier Change for my Wilson Sophia 2's?

Al,

Very interesting.  So if an amp i choose has more gain, that could be a benefit for the volume issues I have spoken about before.  And if the amp also has more wattage, it can control the speaker better and perhaps provide a better sound with high dynamic range music?

I am noticing that in order to really hear all of the music, I do have to go fairly loud.  Would the increase of wattage of the amplifier allow me to hear the music better at lower volumes as well?

Thanks!

My Whest is set to 60db (or 55, I'll have to double check).

The Bryston 7B-ST mono blocks provide 800 watts into 4 ohms - so that would be a 9db increase.  That seems very significant.  would that kind of power add more control and authority over the wilson's making them perform better than the ARC 100 tube watts?  Would my ARC tube line stage work well with the Brystons?

Thanks!

Onhwy61,

before the issue was volume and noise with the phono stage.  Now that I changed my speakers, my question is about the amplifier speaker match.

Czarivey, 

wow, I guess you are saying My Sophia's are underpowered!  Obviously there are loads of opinions on this, but I am gravitating towards this opinion as well.  I called Wilson yesterday and spoke to one of the tech guys there.  He told me that Wilsons in general react very well to high powered amplifiers.

i think it's time for me to learn more about amplifiers. For starters I need to better understand the relationship between gain and wattage.

thanks for the input.

Czarivey,

what at do you think about bryston 4bst or a pair of 7bst monos?  They are in the same price category of my vt100.  

So clearly there are a lot of viewpoints on this subject!  That is to be expected as I am learning that speaker - amplifier matching seems to be one of the black arts.  Thank you all for your posts.

To sum up, some say speakers need loads of wattage to get control, tight bass, and better imaging.  some say even hungry speakers do fine with lower wattage tube amps.

I spoke to Wilson Audio and their man that I spoke to said that the speakers do indeed react well to lots of wattage.

There are two issues I am raising here.  One, I feel I am raising my volume control too high to get where I want to be, and this is a gain issue.  The 2nd is the question of wattage and control, and what to feed my Sophia 2's so they deliver their best work.

One suggestion was the preamp (phono or one stage) was not giving enough gain.  If I followed that route and get a preamp that has more gain, such as the ARC LS26 with 24db of gain, compared to 18db of gain in my LS-25, that would solve only one of the issues, and I would not know if the extra power amp wattage will be adding a lot of improvement with the Wilsons.  (side note, I checked the specs on all of the ARC REF line stages from the Ref 1 to the Ref 10, and all have super low gain.  Much less than my LS-25!  If I were to pony up for a Ref 3 at some point, I don't think I would have enough gain to drive the speakers to the volume I like at all!  Seems odd to me.  Perhaps if one wants a Ref series line stage, one needs a particularly high gain amplifier, but I digress).

For my budget ($2200), I am leaning towards the Bryston 4BSST at the moment.  23db or 29db of gain (selectable), 500 watts in 4 Ohms, this has the right price point, solid warranty, 6db increase in gain, and 5 times the wattage.  (Al, it also has 20K load impedance that you warned about for matching to the LS-25.)

Today I am going to read up on how amplifiers work, so I can better appreciate Al's comments, which are a bit over my head!  Time to study.

I was looking at the 7bst and 7bsst.  Only trouble is that the 7bst will only give 23db of gain in a balanced output, and the newer 7bsst model is out of budget.. For those reasons i am thinking that the 4bsst is the right way to go.