Need more power

Tacs, Sean thanks for the advise. You guys are right.

An amp change will not nececssarily solve your problem. Let the speakers burn is for some time, change around the placement. I assume you're doing that. Also try borrowing a good active preamp, it may be that the passive pre is contributing to the problem: amps always like to see a stable source with low impedance drive. A preamp might help.

If your speakers really are 88 dB's and you've got a decent sized room, you better start looking for something that will do at least 150 - 200 tube watts or 200 - 250 SS watts rms per channel @ 8 ohms. That is, if you want to be able to play reasonably loud and not distort on peaks.

While i tend to crank things a lot harder than most people, I've got several sets of speakers in that same sensitivity range ( 87 - 88 db's ). They can all suck down an easy 500+ wpc like it was nothing. Even at 900+ wpc passively bi-amped, the amps were crying out in pain while the speakers kept saying "feed me more". I was finally able to quench their thirst with 1200+ wpc feeding them.

I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but if you want to play at HIGH volume levels and / or not clip the amp on sustained dynamic peaks with speakers of that sensitivity level, that is what it will take. I found this out the hard ( and expensive ) way with a LOT of trial and error. The importancy of speaker efficiency has never been clearer to me than after going through that fiasco. Sean
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