PrimaLuna EVO 400 v Cary SLI-100

Some good advice here. Your Heresy Speakers are very efficient at 99db. You can easily get away with a low powered amp and have the ability to then use single ended triode  class A amps that use wonderful sounding tubes like 300B, 845 or other amps with EL34 tubes. Any of these would be likely be a better sonic match to your speakers than at KT type based amp.  Also consider that as you go up in power you may increase the number of output tubes thus increasing the cost when retubing. Additionally  moderate to high powered amps can create more background noise at low to moderate volume with speakers of high efficiency. Stay under 40watts per channel.

My Cornwall 4's are moved by an arrangement of components that have proven to be very well matched to the task.. The PL EVO 400 Pre is sandwiched between a Holo May KTE DAC and a pair of AGD Audion Mk3 monoblocs. The CD transport is a Jay's CDT3 Mk3. The Primaluna pre uses NOS Mullards in the rectifier positions and a pair of NOS Amperex "Bugle Boy" 12au7's from the late 1950's in the gain positions. This took awhile to become a stellar setup as most of these components needed a lot of break-in. The PL was already broken in.

It did finally take some extensive fiddling with power cables and IC's to get everything just right, but that is par for the course.

+1 for Line Magnetic. I have the 501 IA running KT120s class AB, very nice sounding integrated with excellent build quality.

I believe that Prima Luna is a Dutch company that farms out manufacturing to China, and I m pretty sure that the Cary would still be built in North Carolina. If everything else was equal, that would be a factor that I would consider to be in favor of the Cary.

Shawnmr2

That’s a nice amp.