Bought a pair of Magnepan LRS. Should I buy a Schiit Vidar or Bryston 3B-ST?

Bryston all day long.  It will deliver the power needed for Magnepans.

Several responses. 1.  Bryston has been around many years and their amps are known for their rugged build quality, reliability and ability to deliver high current to current hungry speakers. Back in the day, some folks felt they did not sound as good in the highs and upper mids as some "others" that were much more expensive. They sounded great to me with good dynamics. 2.  Regarding bridging: a bridged amp will see a 2 ohm load driving a "4 ohm"speaker.  Remember a speaker is a reactive load and the real world impedance is all over the place when playing
 music. Most bridged amps are rated at 8 ohms so this makes for potential problems.  You miight ask: Is the amp in question 2 ohm stable?   3. I would not consider any speaker that takes 250 + watts+....and tons of current to play as loud as I want. Why would you consider a Maggie for ear injuring volumn levels?  Playing loud is not it's forte! (Ha!)  You can drive any number of horn loaded designs to 112 db or more with a good 100 watt amp. This is better than driving a power hungry speaker to its limits and the limits of the power amp. Hope you have a big space. 4. I had Maggie's for years and had no problem driving them with high current amps that delivered "100 watts" at 8 ohms and double that into a  "nominal 4 ohm" speakers. One amp, an ARC D-52, played both Dalquests (pretty power hungry!) and Maggies to uncomfortably loud levels.  5. I have dynamic speakers  in my main room now because of placement issues as well as available power. Good luck! ENJOY THE MUSIC!

Emotiva XPA2 on my 1.7i sounds great. Can one used for the same price as Vidars. I highly recommend.

Two things:
1) There is no substitute for horsepower. Maggie's need/love power so a few extra horses behind them is always good.
2) Monoblocks, monoblocks, monoblocks.
That's my 2 cents.

areasonableman:
" I plan on travelling so small form factor matters to me but I'd like to stay with class ab, and balanced connections. I like the idea of having monoblocks with the Schiit when I get the money, and I've had good experiences with the brand. (Owned a Saga, a Mani, and a Jotunheim twice) but Bryston has the name recognition."


areasonableman,

     There currently are several brands of a certain amp type that are perfectly suited for driving your new pair of LRS speakers or literally any pair of Magnepans.  These amps are high powered, stable into 4 ohms and less, have a small form factor, typically have unbalanced and balanced inputs, are relatively inexpensive in both stereo and monoblock forms, have very low distortion, are very accurate, detailed, with background noise levels that are dead quiet, have a smooth and natural frequency response from top to bottom, have exceptionally powerful dynamics, run cool, consume very little electricity and are extremely close to the ideal amp analogy of a 'straight wire with gain'.
    These ideal amps for your pair of  LRS are called, whoa, oh hold on, wait a second.  I'm sorry, I just remembered you only wanted to consider class AB amps.  Never mind.

      I'd suggest you try to either live up to your username or change it to 'afoolishman'.


Tim