The neat thing about virgo's is that they are SO high resolution that you can afford to lose a little resolution to have other things - like tube warmth. I use rca nordost red dawn with mine and have excellent sound. I had some balanced kimber 1120's in the system for a few hours, and thought it was a little sweeter, but slightly less detailed. I've read in several places that nordost and yamamura are the best cables for them. For amps, I've used Sonic Frontiers SFM-160's, a conrad johnson mv-50, an audio research vt100m2, a mccormack dna 1/reva, and a set of pass aleph 2's. If you like soundstaging with a warm sound, the sonic frontiers were the best. If you like highly detailed tube sound with natural instrument timbres, the vt100. If detail, bass, and a gutsy sound is your thing then the mccormack rules (it literally shakes my house at ANY volume), and for the ultimate in detail with an incomparable midrange, the pass alephs. The vt100, the mccormack, and the alephs are so close in overall performance that you would have to be neurotic to care about the differences. What is amazing is how much the vt100 and mccormack sound alike with the virgo's, but completely different with my magnepan 1.6's. I vote the aleph 2's the best of the bunch. Aleph's natural music purity + the virgos detail brings out more of the music than anything I've ever heard. I do caution that this combination is unforgiving of less than ideal recordings. The vt100 is much more forgiving.
