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My Long List of Amplifiers and My Personal Review of Each!

So I have been in a long journey looking to find the best amplifiers for my martin logan montis. As you know, the match between an amplifier and speakers has to be a good "marriage" and needs to be blend exquisitely. Right now, I think I might have found the best sounding amplifier for martin logan. I have gone through approximately 34-36 amplifiers in the past 12 months. Some of these are:

Bryston ST, SST, SST2 series
NAD M25
PARASOUND HALO
PARASOUND CLASSIC
KRELL TAS
KRELL KAV 500
KRELL CHORUS
ROTEL RMB 1095
CLASSE CT 5300
CLASSE CA 2200
CLASSE CA 5200
MCINTOSH MC 205
CARY AUDIO CINEMA 7
OUTLAW AUDIO 755
LEXICON RX7
PASS LABS XA 30.8
BUTLER AUDIO 5150
ATI SIGNATURE SERIES 6005

With all that said, the amplifiers I mentioned above are the ones that in my opinion are worth mentioning. To make a long story short, there is NO 5 CHANNEL POWER AMP that sounds as good as a 3ch and 2ch amplifier combination. i have done both experiments and the truth is that YOU DO lose details and more channel separation,etc when you select a 5 channel power amplifier of any manufacturer.
My recollection of what each amp sounded like is as follows:

ATI SIGNATURE SERIES 6005 (great power and amazing soundstage. Very low noise floor, BUT this amplifiers NEEDS TO BE cranked up in order to fully enjoy it. If you like listening at low volume levels or somewhat moderate, you are wasting your time here. This amp won’t sound any different than many other brands out there at this volume. The bass is great, good highs although they are a bit bright for my taste)

NAD M25 (very smooth, powerful, but somewhat thin sounding as far as bass goes)
Bryston sst2(detailed, good soundstage, good power, but can be a little forward with certain speakers which could make them ear fatiguing at loud volumes)

Krell (fast sounding, nice bass attack, nice highs, but some detail does get lost with certain speakers)

rotel (good amp for the money, but too bright in my opinion)

cary audio (good sound overall, very musical, but it didn’t have enough oomph)

parasound halo (good detail, great bass, but it still holds back some background detail that i can hear in others)

lexicon (very laid back and smooth. huge power, but if you like more detail or crisper highs, this amp will disappoint you)

McIntosh mc205 (probably the worst multichannel amp given its price point. it was too thin sounding, had detail but lacked bass.

butler audio (good amplifier. very warm and smooth sweet sounding. i think for the money, this is a better amp than the parasound a51)

pass labs (very VERY musical with excellent bass control. You can listen to this for hours and hours without getting ear fatigue. however, it DOES NOT do well in home theater applications if all you have is a 2 channel set up for movies. The midrange gets somewhat "muddy" or very weak sounding that you find yourself trying to turn it up.

classe audio (best amplifier for multi channel applications. i simply COULDNT FIND a better multi channel amplifier PERIOD. IT has amazing smoothness, amazing power and good bass control although i would say krell has much better bass control)

Update: The reviews above were done in January 2015. Below is my newest update as of October 2016:



PS AUDIO BHK 300 MONOBLOCKS: Amazing amps. Tons of detail and really amazing midrange. the bass is amazing too, but the one thing i will say is that those of you with speakers efficiency of 87db and below you will not have all the "loudness" that you may want from time to time. These amps go into protection mode when using a speaker such as the Salon, but only at very loud levels. Maybe 97db and above. If you don’t listen to extreme crazy levels, these amps will please you in every way.

Plinius Odeon 7 channel amp: This is THE BEST multichannel amp i have ever owned. Far , but FAR SUPERIOR to any other multichannel amp i have owned. In my opinion it destroyed all of the multichannel amps i mentioned above and below. The Odeon is an amp that is in a different tier group and it is in a league of its own. Amazing bass, treble and it made my center channel sound more articulate than ever before. The voices where never scrambled with the action scenes. It just separated everything very nicely.

Theta Dreadnaught D: Good detailed amp. Looks very elegant, has a pleasant sound, but i found it a tad too bright for my taste. I thought it was also somewhat "thin" sounding lacking body to the music. could be that it is because it is class d?

Krell Duo 300: Good amp. Nice and detailed with enough power to handle most speakers out there. I found that it does have a very nice "3d" sound through my electrostatics. Nothing to fault here on this amp.
Mark Levinson 532H: Great 2 channel amp. Lots of detail, amazing midrange which is what Mark Levinson is known for. It sounds very holographic and will please those of you looking for more detail and a better midrange. As far as bass, it is there, but it is not going to give you the slam of a pass labs 350.5 or JC1s for example. It is great for those that appreciate classical music, instrumental, etc, but not those of you who love tons of deep bass.

 It is articulate sounding too
Krell 7200: Plenty of detail and enough power for most people. i found that my rear speakers contained more information after installed this amp. One thing that i hated is that you must use xlr cables with this amp or else you lose most of its sound performance when using RCA’s.

Krell 402e: Great amp. Very powerful and will handle any speaker you wish. Power is incredible and with great detail. That said, i didn’t get all the bass that most reviewers mentioned. I thought it was "ok" in regards to bass. It was there, but it didn’t slam me to my listening chair.

Bryston 4B3: Good amp with a complete sound. I think this amp is more laid back than the SST2 version. I think those of you who found the SST2 version of this amp a little too forward with your speakers will definitely benefit from this amp’s warmth. Bryston has gone towards the "warm" side in my opinion with their new SST3 series. As always, they are built like tanks. I wouldn’t call this amp tube-like, but rather closer to what the classe audio delta 2 series sound like which is on the warm side of things.

Parasound JC1s: Good powerful amps. Amazing low end punch (far superior bass than the 402e). This amp is the amp that i consider complete from top to bottom in regards to sound. Nothing is lacking other than perhaps a nicer chassis. Parasound needs to rework their external appearance when they introduce new amps. This amp would sell much more if it had a revised external appearance because the sound is a great bang for the money. It made my 800 Nautilus scream and slam. Again, amazing low end punch.

Simaudio W7: Good detailed amp. This amp reminds me a lot of the Mark Levinson 532h. Great detail and very articulate. I think this amp will go well with bookshelves that are ported in order to compensate for what it lacks when it comes to the bass. That doesn’t mean it has no bass, but when it is no Parasound JC1 either.
Pass labs 350.5: Wow, where do i begin? maybe my first time around with the xa30.8 wasn’t as special as it was with this monster 350.5. It is just SPECTACULAR sounding with my electrostatics. The bass was THE BEST BASS i have ever heard from ANY amp period. The only amp that comes close would be the jC1s. It made me check my settings to make sure the bass was not boosted and kept making my jaw drop each time i heard it. It totally destroyed the krell 402e in every regard. The krell sounded too "flat" when compared to this amp. This amp had amazing mirange with great detail up top. In my opinion, this amp is the best bang for the money. i loved this amp so much that i ended up buying the amp that follows below.

Pass labs 250.8: What can i say here. This is THE BEST STEREO AMP i have ever heard. This amp destroys all the amps i have listed above today to include the pass labs 350.5. It is a refined 350.5 amp. It has more 3d sound which is something the 350.5 lacked. It has a level of detail that i really have never experienced before and the bass was amazing as well. I really thought it was the most complete power amplifier i have ever heard HANDS DOWN. To me, this is a benchmark of an amplifier. This is the amp that others should be judged by. NOTHING is lacking and right now it is the #1 amplifier that i have ever owned.

My current amps are Mcintosh MC601s: i decided to give these 601s a try and they don’t disappoint. They have great detail, HUGE soundstage, MASSIVE power and great midrange/highs. The bass is great, but it is no pass labs 250.8 or 350.5. As far as looks, these are the best looking amps i have ever owned. No contest there. i gotta be honest with you all, i never bought mcintosh monos before because i wasn’t really "wowed" by the mc452, but it could have been also because at that time i was using a processor as a preamp which i no longer do. Today, i own the Mcintosh C1100 2 chassis tube preamp which sounds unbelievable. All the amps i just described above have been amps that i auditioned with the C1100 as a preamp. The MC601s sound great without a doubt, but i will say that if you are looking for THE BEST sound for the money, these would not be it. However, Mcintosh remains UNMATCHED when it comes to looks and also resale value. Every other amp above depreciates much faster than Mcintosh.

That said, my future purchase (when i can find a steal of a deal) will be the Pass labs 350.8. I am tempted to make a preliminary statement which is that i feel this amp could be THE BEST stereo amp under 30k dollars. Again, i will be able to say more and confirm once i own it. I hope this update can help you all in your buying decisions!


jays_audio_lab

Showing 8 responses by kstaken

kstaken
16 posts
 
The mutec ref 10 is a 10mhz master clock, it does not output a word clock signal. To use it with a DCS dac you need something to provide the word clock. You can use the Mutec mc3+ to do this or the Vivaldi clock. 

Esoteric gear will take the 10mhz clock signal directly but uses a 50ohm BNC connector. The mutec ref 10 has both 75 ohm and 50 ohm connectors for this reason.
kstaken
16 posts
 
A couple pages back there was some discussion about the Benchmark LA4/AHB2 vs. the Luxman C900U/M900U. I don’t really participate in these forums but this is something I thought I might be able to share some experience on as I’ve owned both of these at the same time. I still own the Benchmark pieces along with the C900U.

When it comes to the Benchmark gear the word you often hear mentioned is "transparency" and this is 100% true. The Benchmark gear is by far the most transparent gear I’ve heard. It’s impossible to describe the sound of the gear because to a huge extent the gear it self simply doesn’t have a sound, at least not one that I can discern. The sound is simply the sound of the source component and recording. If the recording is warm you get warm, if the recording is cold and sterile that’s what it will give you. It the soundstage is big it will be big, if it’s narrow, shallow or deep ... yep all there ... if the information is in the recording. For me this quality is absolutely intoxicating but a lot of audiophiles seem to not like it.

The down side of this is that you have to have everything aligned just right or it won’t sound right. The gear won’t hide flaws like using a laptop via USB into a DAC with a crap USB interface. If you take that and feed it through the Benchmark chain, guess what? The Benchmark chain will sound awful. It gives you what you give it and doesn’t try to editorialize and "fix" things.

The Luxman gear to me is very different. The M900U amp in particular is very colored to me. It puts a warm and artificially large sound on everything. This might be described as making the soundstage bigger and putting meat on the bones of the performers but to me it sounds wrong and has the quality of homogenizing the sound. In my experience a lot of audiophiles love this quality but I personally do not, hence the reason I no longer have the amp.

The Luxman preamp is more transparent than the amp but not on the level of the Benchmark and it has a subtle quality that I call fake refinement. This is hard to describe but I perceive it as a slight softening of transients and a lengthening of decay trails in a way that makes things sound more "refined". This sounds very good but to me this is also just homogenizing the sound. It’s a sound imposed by the gear that’s not in the recording. Again a lot of audiophiles will prefer this because it does sound very good but for me even though I still own the C900U it’s just sitting on the shelf unused.

I haven’t put the Benchmark gear up against anything at the $30K+ level in my system but I’ve had a lot of gear up to the $20K level through my system and for me the Benchmark just gets out of the way of the music in a way that everything else I’ve tried fails.

To @whitecameross I realize the Benchmark stuff isn’t even close to the price level that you’re playing with, hopefully my thoughts aren’t unwelcome since other people had been asking about this.

BTW, for speakers I have Martin Logan CLX Art and ATC SCM40 which are both highly transparent transducers and with the Benchmark gear either combo is simply ... intoxicating.

kstaken
16 posts
 
For me there is a difference between neutral and transparent. Neutral is necessary but not sufficient for transparency. I've heard many components that are considered neutral that don't even come close to being transparent. Neutral is just about frequency response while transparency requires clean frequency response plus immense resolution, dynamics and an absence of noise that many so called neutral components just don't have. 

This Benchmark stuff has been completely surprising to me, at first I was highly skeptical that it could really be that good but I bought an AHB2 for the hell of it since it's not that expensive and once it hit my system the Luxman M900U saw almost no further usage. The Benchmark was vastly superior based on what I look for in audio. For me, nothing is as engaging as actual transparency to the recording and being able to dig so deep into recordings keeps me glued to the listening chair to an unhealthy degree. 

It's definitely preference though as the person that ended up with my M900U bought a used AHB2, tried it, preferred the M900U and sold the AHB2 to me so I could run two as monos. Shrug.

kstaken
16 posts
 
@riaa you’re right I don’t primarily listen to classic rock and if I did I would probably choose tubes and a big bass heavy speaker. But one of the big reasons that I appreciate transparency so much is because I don’t listen to a narrow range of music and the system needs to handle whatever I choose to throw at it.

For me that works best when the system does as much as it can to simply get out of the way. The only time this really fails for me is on some horribly crushed modern loudness war productions where nothing is really going to help.

Classic rock is never really a problem, but the presentation is definitely different and I 100% get why that won’t work for everyone. For me ... I can go from a Mahler symphony to Billie Eilish to Love to Branford Marsalis to Portishead and finish with Iron Maiden and it all works fantastically.

As I write this I’m listening to Robert Johnson and if you’ve heard these you know the transfers from 78s of these 1930s recordings can be iffy. But the resolution of this chain is so high that it gives you everything these ancient recording have to give and for me being able to connect to such influential music on this level is just magical.

Anyway, I’m not really trying to advocate for anything. Just sharing my thoughts after lurking on this thread for what seems like forever.

I was actually worried somebody might make a comparison to viber6 but I think he plays the violin whereas I play the banjo. Pipe and slippers ... nah.
kstaken
16 posts
 
As far as the Benchmark AHB2 shutting down, I have 2 running as bridged monos and with the Martin Logan CLX they've never flinched. I checked with Benchmark before trying this and they said there should be no problems even though they hadn't heard of anyone using them on the CLX and they were correct.

BTW, to clarify the AHB2 is the amp, the LA4 or HPA4 is the preamp. HPA4 just adds a headphone section and that's what I actually own that replaced my Luxman C900U.
kstaken
16 posts
 
@whitecamaross I'm really interested in your comparison of Esoteric K1 and DCS Vivaldi. I'm currently evaluating if there are any wins in stepping up to that level on the digital side. I currently have a DCS Debussy along with the Mutec MC-3+ and Mutec Ref 10 master clock along with the Benchmark DAC3 and a Schiit Yggdrasil. I've been seriously considering either an Esoteric K-01xs or the Grandioso K1. 

So far the only thing in that price range I've been able to bring in to my system has been the Nagra Tube DAC which is something you might actually like. It's fundamentally pretty transparent but it has a tube so adds just a hint of bloom which I actually found to be very well done. Not sure it will be for me but I felt it was a very good sounding piece.


kstaken
16 posts
 
@p59teitel that photo of the salons on that rack makes me nervous just looking at it. Seems like such narrow contact footprint for such a tall speaker. 

@whitecamaross check out modulum audio racks. They make a pretty large amp stand. I’m awaiting delivery of 8 shelves worth of their racks to replace my Box rack and currently have their amp stand in house on loan from the dealer and every component I’ve placed on it has responded with greatly enhanced clarity and broader dynamic range. Not cheap but not stupid expensive given the cost of those Pass amps.


kstaken
16 posts
 
@whitecamaross did you ever declare a winner in your comparison between the DCS Vivaldi and Esoteric Grandioso?
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