Herman: I'm curious as to why you say that the Pass Firstwatt is incompatible with multi-way speakers? While it was designed for use with single driver systems, i see no reason why it won't function with multiple drivers. After all, "personal preference" seems to be the rule of thumb here, so who is to say that someone wouldn't like this combo?
Ttrhp: You might want to look into some of the Monarchy Audio SM-70 Pro's. You can run this as a stereo amp by itself or run two of them, each in mono mode. With one amp in stereo, you have 25 wpc @ 8 / 40 wpc @ 4. Given that this amp is biased into a Class A mode of operation, it does run quite warm. It also avoids the crossover distortion that becomes unbearable on high efficiency horns, which is what makes most lower bias Class AB amps unusable with this type of speaker.
Running two of these units in mono, you'll end up with 80 wpc @ 8 / 120 wpc @ 4 ohms. In my experience, this is how the amps sound best. With the efficiency of your speakers though, you may not need the additional headroom that the dual mono-block configuration offers. Starting off with one would be an easy way to see whether or not you like the amp at all and find out whether that one amp would be enough for your specific listening requirements.
Either way, these amps are quite "tubey" sounding as far as SS goes. I'm not saying that they will duplicate the sound of your specific tube gear or offer the highest levels of resolution that SS has to offer, but i don't think that you'll find their presentation "offensive" in the least. Based on past experiences, i think that this series of products would be a much better match for a horn based speaker than the comparably powered Aleph series any day of the week. This is just my personal preference though, so take that comment for what it is worth i.e. "absolutely nothing" : ) Sean
>
PS... Please keep us posted on what you decide to do and how things turn out.
Ttrhp: You might want to look into some of the Monarchy Audio SM-70 Pro's. You can run this as a stereo amp by itself or run two of them, each in mono mode. With one amp in stereo, you have 25 wpc @ 8 / 40 wpc @ 4. Given that this amp is biased into a Class A mode of operation, it does run quite warm. It also avoids the crossover distortion that becomes unbearable on high efficiency horns, which is what makes most lower bias Class AB amps unusable with this type of speaker.
Running two of these units in mono, you'll end up with 80 wpc @ 8 / 120 wpc @ 4 ohms. In my experience, this is how the amps sound best. With the efficiency of your speakers though, you may not need the additional headroom that the dual mono-block configuration offers. Starting off with one would be an easy way to see whether or not you like the amp at all and find out whether that one amp would be enough for your specific listening requirements.
Either way, these amps are quite "tubey" sounding as far as SS goes. I'm not saying that they will duplicate the sound of your specific tube gear or offer the highest levels of resolution that SS has to offer, but i don't think that you'll find their presentation "offensive" in the least. Based on past experiences, i think that this series of products would be a much better match for a horn based speaker than the comparably powered Aleph series any day of the week. This is just my personal preference though, so take that comment for what it is worth i.e. "absolutely nothing" : ) Sean
>
PS... Please keep us posted on what you decide to do and how things turn out.