Telescope....
I own a pair of TSM-MXr's. I'm running them with a Manley Stingray II tube amp. As Rebbi mentioned, the improvement with a good tube amp is not subtle.
That said I've also hooked them up to my Emotiva amps, Odyssey, Denon and several other modest to mid range amps. While I'm impressed what the Merlins can manage with a Emotiva amp, the better options are amazing. I don't think the latest Merlin TSM efforts are less forgiving of bad amp matching than many other top tier speaker systems.
Getting back to the Stingray vs. Emotiva (The Stingray costs something like 10 times more money) my main observation is the far greater imaging ability with the tubes. Oddly the Emotiva manages to get plenty of sweetness of the Merlins and better bass!
The magic of the Merlins (for me) is how they vanish and tubes seem to bring that to a final level that just sounds insanely good to my ears.
Cheers,
Rob
I own a pair of TSM-MXr's. I'm running them with a Manley Stingray II tube amp. As Rebbi mentioned, the improvement with a good tube amp is not subtle.
That said I've also hooked them up to my Emotiva amps, Odyssey, Denon and several other modest to mid range amps. While I'm impressed what the Merlins can manage with a Emotiva amp, the better options are amazing. I don't think the latest Merlin TSM efforts are less forgiving of bad amp matching than many other top tier speaker systems.
Getting back to the Stingray vs. Emotiva (The Stingray costs something like 10 times more money) my main observation is the far greater imaging ability with the tubes. Oddly the Emotiva manages to get plenty of sweetness of the Merlins and better bass!
The magic of the Merlins (for me) is how they vanish and tubes seem to bring that to a final level that just sounds insanely good to my ears.
Cheers,
Rob