ARC...D-90B or D-115MKII? - Driving Maggie 1.6s


Greetings!

I'm about to venture into tubes and don't want to spend a ton of money. I'm looking at these two amps for approximately the same price.

Is one of these better than the other? I'm expecting delivery of my Magnepan 1.6s on Thursday. It seems like both amps would have enough power to drive them w/o much difficulty, so I'm just looking for comments from anyone who's familiar with these pieces.

BTW - The rest of the system will be:

Audio Research CD-1
Audio Research LS-9
Interconnects are Homegrown Audio Super Silver and Audioquest Opal X3. Speaker cables will be either Audioquest GR-8 or Goertz MI2.

Thanks so much,

Dan
danheather

Showing 1 response by tubegroover

Hi Dan

I have a buddy that bought my D-115 Mk2 to replace his D-90. It really took him a while to decide which one HE liked better. After rolling some of the inputs on the D-115, he finally sold the D-90 but still felt it better in some respects, sweeter mids. The d-115 does have more powerful bass. All things said, I like the d-115 but it is a preference thing. At the same price I would go with the d-115, feeling it offers better value. If you have the chance to listen to both, don't turn down the opportunity. You may opt for the 90.