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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
gmorris
351 posts
 
I used the D115 MkII for 12 years to drive the MG 3A and 3.5/R. The D115 MKII was an excellent performer, and is highly recommended for the MG 1.6. I would use the quasi-biamping technique with the ARC.
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danheather OP
108 posts
 
Thanks guys!

I've decided to purchase the D-115. Thanks for all of the advice.

What is the quasi-biamping technique? Is that bi-wiring? If so, I'm definitely intending to do that.

Thanks,

Dan
baddlcif61f
1 posts
 
Just a note... I own a D90 (orig w/6550s) and if I recall
the D115 was made in (more or less) the same era. I just purchased/installed the cap upgrade from Audio Research and it was well worth it. I had no idea what I was missing... As an EE and former tech, I still have problems thinking that it would make that much difference, but the fact is that either of these amps run pretty warm and power supply caps will have a degraded lifespan (avg 20-30+ years gets cut down to more like 15+)... I am driving B&W N804s with no problems and lots of reserve power so I can not imagine the 115 not having enough.

Just my $0.02.
frap
213 posts
 
I have owned and still own ARC D-90B amps. The original D-90, used the 6550 output tube, as correctly stated by baddlci above, and based its inputs on the 12AX7 tube. The sound of the D-90B was vastly improved over the D-90. A complete change to 6DJ8 and 6L6 occured. There was a smidgen less authority vs the 6550 version, but the B version amplifier was a complete success in 3D, MUSICALITY in spades, utter naturalness and rightness in tone. The D-115 and D-70 series, was a significant step down in my opinion. Air and ambience retrieval seemed less. A sense of dryness entered the picture, and overall less enjoyment. The MK II version, of the 115, improved things greatly, but the 90B magic, was never fully recovered. Things of course went rapidly downhill, into the Classic 60 series of hybrids. ARC, would not recover from this misguided direction, until very recently. The prices today are just too high, for the circuits that approximate the older gear.
The great ones were,
D-75A, D-76A
D-150
D-79A
D-40
D-90B
D-115Mk 2
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