Best Digital Amp for Legacy Focus 20/20?

Huck55 Some people are quite happy with the Nuforce 8. It sells in that range. I know, for a fact, it can run your speakers to any loudness you can stand. There are digital power supply ICE amps aplenty. Some of them sell below $2000. Try to buy US, if you live here. Service is a bitch otherwise.

Ar_t what do you mean when you say, " The only drawback is that the frequency respsonse is load dependent?"

My speakers are a mean ass load, and there is no audible frequency problem.

Another option is the Belcanto Design eVo amp range. These are great and not as clinical sounding as most of the digital amps , www.belcantodesign.com

I have a few belcanto products in my system including the Belcanto PRe6 multichannel preamp which I find excellent, the best preamp i have owned so far, beating out the likes of Theta, Gryphon, EAD and Meridian.

Your speakers are close to a resistive load. It may be a very low one, but it is still close to being resistive.

As you go from 8 ohms, down to 4 ohms, the respsonse tends to level out some. But drop below that impedance and it starts to fall off rather rapidly.

Ribbons and planar magnetic speakers are a nice, constant resistance. Cone drivers have peaks and dips in their impedance curve. What us technical types like to refer to as a complex load. Complex in that it has resistance and reactive components to the impedance.

So......in general.......amps like reistive loads better, until they get too low. Such as your speakers. Yes, that does create problems.

ICEpower is a different beast. By its very nature, it has to have a low-pass filter on its output. It will interact with the load to make it sound dull into a higher impedance speaker, and more bright into a lower impedance speaker. (May be that it has just the right amount on your system, which could explain why you are so enthusiastic, and others don't get it.) This is why some listeners will say that one sounds bright, the next will say it is too dark.

With a cone loudspeaker, with all of its variations in impedance, it can be difficult to predict exactly how an ICEpower amp will respond. Granted, we are talking usually less than 0.25 dB variation at 20 kHz, but that is more than enough of a change to have a very noticeable effect. One that is clearly heard.

So........the guy wants to buy an Ear amp. He hears at a buddy's house, sounds good, and he buys one. He brings it home........hooks it up to his 4 ohm load, and it is too bright. He hates it, maybe.

So.....the point is: listen one on the the system that you are buying it for. Listening to one on another system may skew the results enough to make a marked difference in how it sounds.

So........since we are discussing it:

In my experience:

The 250 will interact with the load less than the 500. The 1000, which only comes in the ASP series, will interact a great deal. I do not think that you could use one on your Scintilla system. Yes, it would drive the daylights out of them, but the roll-off with that value impedance would not be to your liking.

Unless you like almost -2 dB drop at 20 kHz. Who knows.......maybe you will.

Anyway.....as an amp designer, this minor wart is the sort of thing that gnaws at me. Maybe at some other time I will discuss some of my approach to this problem. This isn't the right place, though.

I would second Bel Canto eVo series amps. Esp eVo 4 is worth auditioning, since is much better sounding than 200.2 or eVo 2 and only slightly more expensive (eVo 4 is two eVo 2s in one chessis).

I run my eVo 4 in bridged mode (2 x 700W at 4 Ohm) with 4Ohm / 87dB Avalon Eidolons with excelent resoults.