Impressed with Tubes

Pay close to attention to Rlawry and Atmasphere's comments, a tube amplifier must be well mated to the speakers. Certain speakers need to have SS amplification if they do not have linear impedance (one might argue these are not particularly well desgined speakers, but that is another issue), but if you have "tube friendly" (your dealer should be able to help, or the speaker mfg)speakers, I think you will go to tube amps and never come back.

Agree on SS for these speakers. How much are you willing to spend to upgrade from the Rotel?

I do have a tube amp (CAT JL2)that can handle low impedances, but it is expesnive and requires large transformers (the amp weighs 180 lbs!)and Atmasphere obviously uses a different approach. But nevertheless a higher impedance is always better for tubes and a smooth, linear impedance curve is important. I would think even a 4ohm nominal impedance would be ok, as long as the impedance curve was smooth, without large peaks and valleys at various frequencies - I think they call it impedance phase(?) or something. A discussion with your amp and speaker mfg always helps. I never understood much about the subject till Bobby at Merlin (speakers) explained some of this stuff to me and Atmaspheres contribution on the subject have always helped. The speaker in question seems to offer challenges to tube amps, even if they worked, they would "work" the tubes hard.

I agree with you, and when you do hear an good match between pre/amp/speaker it suddenly becomes obvious that something good is happening, a sense of balance from highs to lows. One advantage to well designed integrateds.

Not quite. But in speaking with your amp and speaker folks, you should be able to see if there are any red flags that would be obvious to them; if they are honest, then at that point you should not end up with any grave mismatch, and then it is up to you and your taste - there will never be one choice that works best for everyone....

Under what circumstances would using ZEROs not be a good idea?