B & W Naut. 804S-Appropriate power source???

Goodbye, Larry.

Sdan, I assume you refer to the Arcam Alpha 10 integrated amplifier.

The weakness in the Arcam Alpha 10 integrated amplifier is in the pre-amp stage. I own one of these and when I was transitioning to a pair of separates, the pre-amp arrived about a month or so before the amps. I opened the Arcam up and flipped the little switch that allows an external pre-amp to be used. I slotted the pre-amp (BAT VK-50SE) in between the CD player (Arcam Alpha 9) and the Alpha 10 and I was shocked by the transformation.

I would definitely explore this. Buy a nice pre-amp and continue to use the power amp section of the Arcam until more funds are available to complete the set-up. You are in for a nice surprise.

Regards,

The 804's deserve quality electronics with some power (at least 100w). I've tried the 804s with the Rotel RB1090 amp (380w), Jeff Rowland 201s mono blocks(250w) and the Leben CS600 Tube Integrated (30w). All these amps worked well with the 804s - 201s being a bit more refined than 1090 and the Leben exceptional in the mids and highs but lacked the vice like grip on the lows at high volumes compared to both SS amps.

Pass Labs works very good with B&Ws. I was driving my N803s with the X250.5 and loved it. You do need good amplifier with B&Ws and also a good speaker cable.