Need help with an amp for the Gallo 3.1s

Peter,

You have gone through a number of great speaker and you now have the Gallo 3.1? Does it have the balls to fill your rather large room with music?

Thinking on the 3.5 powered with my ASR Emitter 1.

I also tried a variety of amps and felt that the bass amp was a necessary improvement.

You can't always go by specs when looking at amps. A lot goes into the rating and there is no standard whatsoever. If you took 10 poweramps rated at 100 watts per channel and tested all of them for power output, the only consistant thing between them, is that they would all put out a different amount of power. People on Audiogon usually can't agree on anything, but on this issue, I would guess that most would agree with me on this one. I have owned both the Creek and Ayre and the Creek is rated for more power but the Ayre is more powerful. Both will easily power the 3.1's. The store I bought my Ayre from is a Gallo dealer and had them paired with the Ayre for demo's. Just to note, the amp you have now is an excellent entry level tube amp but is not that powerful. Clearly a quality vs quanty issue. All the amps listed on this thread (mine as well as the others) are FAR more powerful than what you have now. I wouldn't worry about power with anything we are talking about here, just pick the one that sounds the best to you.

Forgive my ignorance as im new to solid state but the Gallo team said to look for anything with 150w/channel or more but either the Creek or Ayre come close to that, ideas?

Right now on Audiogon you can get a Belles pre and amp that will meet your needs for $1400.00.

Just get the gallo sub amp and use any integrated on your list or even the sp3 if you can cancel the sale. I could never get satisfying bass with the 3.1's until I dialed in the sub amp. I was using a wyred 4 sound stp and st500 to power them and the sub amp made a big difference.

I had the A5. It had a lot of power but the sound quality was not there. It was very thin and solid state sounding. You don't list either one of these, but if it was my choice, I would choose either a Creek Destiny or an Ayre 7. I have had many integrateds around their respective price points and nothing even came close to either sound wise. Both units have passive line stages which is a huge advantage at this price point. (The Creek has an active section as well.) They are the type of products that you keep for a long time and don't get the urge to upgrade.