Pass Labs XA30.5 and ModWright KWA150

you are looking into "the most "tube-like" SS amps " then you MUST check Spectron amplifier !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I owned a number of tube amps and the last was a McIntosh ...but no comparison with Spectron.

Mike

"Tube-like to me means: Dimensionality of images, bloom and decay, a sense of instruments actually present... "

According to these criteria Spectron is the best "tube-like " ss amplifier I auditioned or owned. (There are very few other ss amps standing at this level or may be above but all are much more expensive)

Two people disagreed with this statement:

1) Semi who found combination of Athma-Shere and Merlin speakers to be better: YES, I AGREE WITH YOU. I visited Merlin room at last RMAF where it was matched with another OTL amp, Joule-Electra - YES, it is match made in heaven. BUT - OTL demands large degree of maintaince and OTL cannot drive well speakers with low impedance. For these reasons I do not own OTL and I presume many, many others too.

2) Zybar who compared it to simply excellent BAT VK150SE (at $18k retail, last time I checked). In order to compare more or less fairly "apple-to-apple" he must have Spectron monoblocks with all upgrades (about $11k last time I checked) and he did not specify it (yet...).

Mike

Hi Zybar,

Yes, you are correct. While I do stand by my writing but I have toi admit an error: instead of "Semi" I wrote "Zybar" and vice-versa.

As I said I love sound of OTL amp when speaker can be matched appropritely. What is rather strange for me is your statement:

"One last note...yes, OTL amps do require more careful speaker matching, but you can use minimize that issue by using a Speltz Zero Autoformers. "

So designer of OTL amp believes that output transformer is BAD (for his varous reasons) and did everything he could to create...OTL (OutputTransferLess) amp and you saying basically to him - you did huge job to eliminate output transformer but I will install it into the signal path ANYWAY and destroy your intention and your goal...and your sound.

You surely has any right to do whatever you want but.... logically isn;t it better just to buy amp WITH output transformers already installed and voiced by the designer? Here we mentioned, for example VK150SE amp... there are others also good but less expensive