Recommendation on power amp

It's always great when you can audition an amp with your speakers.  What amps does your KEF dealer sell?   When I bought my speakers I was able to listen to them with my amps and pre.... Owning the KEFs already you have a benchmark how they sound with excellent amps.   Obviously everything including the room plays into it.    Gonna be tough, the JC 1 amps are very good.  Good luck on your search.  Theta has some nice offerings that might pair nicely with your pre.

Thank you for your response . The theta dealer is recommending the Prometheus monoblocks. I was not very excited with the pairing . I am looking for a warmer sound. My local ayre dealer would not do a home demo for me . The mx-r twenty sound good in his showroom . My local kef dealer does not have ayre. 

Actually oddf not tough at all we had Jc1- on our Blades the $14k Elecrocompaniets were better so were the Chord mono blocks which were about $14k also 

Jc 1 are good amps for their price and power not as good as $20k amps.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Kef Blade, Parasound, Rega, former Jl dealers

More info, with the jl audio cr-1 and f-113 v2, the crossover is at 90 hz. Room tuned by Barry Oder . Sound treated with asc bass traps and diffuser panels.
 So the power amps and the blade 2 have to drive only above 90 hz. The chord monoblocks have great control over the low end. The power amp I would need would need to perform great above 90 hz, cause below that is thru my jl audio. So Dave and Troy with that in mind what would be your thoughts . Jc-1 sound a bit hard when driven loud. 

What is the buget for amps?

15-20k would buy preowned . 

Sad that a dealer selling components priced like that won't do a home demo...

I am very interested to hear from other owners of mx-r twenty, how they feel the amp would integrate and sound with my system. I love what I have read about them and how they sounded in the dealers. 

Hopefully you have another Ayre dealer reasonably close that might let you home demo...  good luck on your search.

No oddfio we are stating we used to be Jl audio dealers because we are not listed on jl audio website.

What is your major malfunction?

We have tons of exp with Blades we were one of the first displaying dealers.

Considering we have exp with most of the ops gear makes our opinions very valid.

Please stick to the topic Oddfi considering you dont own any of this gear makes you super qualified correct?

Best amps we have used with Blades

T A Chord
Krell,
Electro nemo

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

@OP,
I own the original MX-R's (non twenty), and find them to be quite good (paired with Vandy Treo's). I have no experience with KEF Blades, so I can't help you there, but I can't see any problem with using the Ayre with them.
Bob

I have KEF Reference 5s (work better in my room than the Blade 2s) and power them with Electrocompaniet Nemos. Tough to find now, but they are a great match.

The high-end KEFs like a high-current amp with plenty of power to drive them. Others that I’ve heard around your price range that work well are the SimAudio 400M and Jeff Rowland 625 S2.

Gndrbob, the Ayre and Vandy pairing is a good one as Vandy’s tend to be on the warm side where the Kef Blades are a bit more neutral.

The Ayre can work but it depends on system matching, Ayre’s equipment tends to be very neutral, clean and fast but we would not call Ayre’s gear more on the warmer side such as Pass Labs or Krell or other similar sounding gear.

As per Oddfio we stopped selling JL audio because once the company changed managment we were cut off because we has a slow year with them and they want to move to larger more quantity oriented dealers.

In our opinion JL makes an excellent woofer sonically but are being killed by the newer value companies such as SVS and others who are adding more comprehensive room corrrection and setup programs via apps which a lot of clients like.

As per your last insult Oddfio we mentioned that Krell is redoing their website so that is why we are not listed yet on the website.

For proof please check out the email we sent to Krell’s sales manger after living with the Krell K300i Walter liked our email so much he published it.

http://web-extract.constantcontact.com/v1/social_annotation?permalink_uri=2FXckOb&image_url=http...

Any more insults Oddfio?

Theothergreg the Kef Ref 5 are awesome we have both the Kef Blades and the Ref 5 on display, we have the Electrcompaniet AW 400 great amps not as good as the other  brands we mentioned.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Thanks everyone for your input .
i have heard the ayre twenty and I like their clean sweet sound. Not aggressive or overpowering with driving bass. But I have not heard them with the blade 2. Stereophile pairs the twenty’s with the blade 2 and John Atkinson’s has nothing bad to say .
i am going to try to listen to krell gear and see how I like them the solo 575 monoblocks. 
i listen to vocal music and
i am more excited by clean, open ,taller,  wider and deeper soundstage and not gut wrenching driving bass with pace . 
Thanks for all the insight the search for the amp upgrade to jc-1 continues 

Newtoncr, the sound of the new Krell products is very organic, non sterile, big soundstage, good dynamics, tight but not overwelming bass.

Sounds like it might be a perfect fit for you, the sound is somewhat like the JC 1 meaning that the amplifiers are warm and full bodied sounding, but witout the veiling and lack of detail that the JC 1 have when compared to a much more expensive and newer designed amplifier.

Like we said before we has the JC 1 and they were very good but lets fact facts they are close to a 20 year design from a company known for producing value oriented gear.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

newtoncr,

Where are you located?  Read up on Nuforce or Nuprime amps, especially with Bob Smith of TDSS' upgrades to them--factory authorized by the way.  I've taken mine to 5 different friend's systems and the result was the same in all.  It was the best each had hear their system by a good margin.  I happen to have the Nuforce Ref 9 V3 SE monos w/ TDSS level 3 upgrades.  They are phenomenal and carry the Nuforce house sound with a touch of warmth, but with the TDSS upgrades, it's like they are on steroids--everything is better and now more reliable too.  You could hear mine if you are in the Chicago area or will visit soon.

Bob

I highly recommend McIntosh amps and it fits your budget well.

Check out the YouTube video of the Blades with Audionet amplifiers. 
System was well reviewed

If you don’t have a dealer, call up PS Audio and try either their 250 stereo signature amp or their 300 monoblocks. I just bought their amp for my large Ushers. They have a 30 day trial period and they take tradeins. Highly rated. Also, why not drive the blades full range and adjust the subs to bond in properly? I did this and I know others do the same. Any of the amps you are looking at wil drive the blades full range.

I’d recommend checking out the Hegel H30.... plenty of power and hold on the speakers. KEF and Hegel play really well together 

Try the GamuT D 200i, he is very holographic and pure for your system. A question: “Why do you use a extra sub-woofer”? In my opinion,this is a mistake when you relate to the right studio recording. If you have a practically parallel line of 20hz.-20KHz.after measuring your listening room, you really do not need it. Go for a poweramp >200W. P.S.: You have a nice music system.

Sure seems to me that Dave and Troy (The Audio Doctor) have managed to alienate Oddiofyl somewhere along the line.  Thus, his/her focus includes some cautionary notes for the rest of us.

I have received some really, really helpful insights from many, many good-hearted and well-informed hobbyists and professionals alike-- right here on Audiogon.  The help has clarified my focus on how to proceed-- like buying Jim Smith's book "Get Better Sound."

At the same time, please include me on the list of offering cautionary notes regarding  engaging with, or purchasing anything from, Dave and Troy (The Audio Doctor).

Lets get the record straight, Oddfio is a weird dude that has never purchased anything from us or has even talked with us either in person or at shows he draws all of his weird ideas from these posts.

He makes ridiculous claims and questions our veracity, we mentioned in the Krell thread that before hearing the new Krell amplifiers we had 0 interest in their products and after hearing them produce the best sound at the Capitol Audio Fest for the least expensive reference electronics and after starting a thread to gauge other people’s opinion we got the line.

He also quipped that you only had to purchase three pieces to become a dealer, those three pieces were an investment of $26k at retail and we actually bought 4 pieces at $36k investment, I don’t know how many of you guys would shell out that kind of money to try a new line but we did, that is how impressive the new Krell stuff was and we also laid out our reasons of why the line made sense for our store, other dealers might have competiting product at those price points we did not, hence for a number of reasons we bought into Krell.

As per cautionary lamomwen was offended that we were not giving away for less than $12k a $38k pair of CJ Art 275 amplifiers that were used at a few shows and yes they do have a few dings, but work perfectly and have low tube hours and would come with a full warranty, we offered these to him at $12k which was $3k less than the lowest used pair on Audiogon, and he made an insulting commment that his garage amplifiers looked better and how we should steer clear of him.

At $12k we are losing nearly $8k over what we paid for these amplfiers and for this reason he made the above comment not understanding that we as dealers are not purchasing and repurchasing the same used amplifiers that many people can then sell for lower prices as they purchased a product allready used by someone else.

He never countered our offer and was insulted that we didn’t want to lose way more money on a store demo product which would come with a warranty.

What all of this shows is YOU GUYS need to be cautionary when judging ANYONE AND EVERYTHING on these forums.

Take what you read as a starting point always and also remember there are ton’s of fanboys that pump up these threads either pro or con a product that they love.

What makes our store a bit different then most of the stores here is our philosophy to actively seek out new and possibly better products.

We keep on trying new and exciting products when the emmerge and if they are better than what we are selling we move out one line and bring in the new.

People question our motives are we pimping or shilling or trolling.

Honestly most real buyers don’t care, if you are turned on to a new product and it sounds better or costs less and you agree, that the new brand X you are now looking at sounds better and perhaps costs less are you going to be upset or happy?

People need to chill out on the negativity here and bring back the fun and joy of playing with and discovering new products, tools and techniques that improve our experience with recreating music.

For the record in our store we have a combined audio experience of 30 years store experience coupled with a hobbiest/engineer/speaker builder who has been doing this for 45 years.

We have over 60 lines of gear on display, including major electronics loudspeakers, digital and cabling and we are always testing new products recent additions in the last 12 months:

Krell,
Peachtree Audio,
Critical Mass,
Audioquest power cables.
Naim NDX2,
Naim 282/300Dr
Nad Node 2i, C368, M10
Lumin T2
Audio Control Savoy Power amplifer
Epson 10500 laser projector
Dali Oberon line
Krell new R series line
Coda Point 8
Innuos Zenith MK III

This list is not to brag but to back up the point that we are in an ever changing and evolving marketplace.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

@audiotroy 

I find some of your posts informative--or I should say some parts of your posts--but if you want your detractors to "chill," maybe you could try posting once in a while without the compulsive need to hang out your shingle and sell, sell, sell. In. Every. Single. Post.

Capeesh?

Thanks everyone for your inputs. Appreciate each and every one.
read and researched every unit recommended from audionet, NuForce to Electrocompaniet. 
i have narrowed down to 2 amps
the ayre mx-r twenty and the krell 575 xd monoblocks
i am going to listen to the krell and then decide.
i am looking for a significant upgrade over my class a rated parasound jc-1 s 
any advice pertaining to the above two amps would be greatly appreciated.
thanks everyone.

@newtoncr Please post your impressions of the 2 amps with the Blades. I am particularly interested to hear about the synergy with the Krell XD.

Waltersalas, we post on a lot of different products because we have a lot of experience with a lot of different brands we sell five different brands of servers for example most dealers sell one or two.

We are constantly sampling new products and not taking the company line that X product made by the company we allready sell is the best.

For example we have tested many different brands of power conditoners including: Shunyata, Synergistic, Audience, Running Springs, Isotek, Audio Magic, Ps Audio, Audioquest one intresting example was one $9k power conditioner that Mike Fremmer said was so good in Stereophile was tested vs the Audio Magic Oracle another $9k conditoner both were burned in, both had exactly the same components tested in them, went back in forth a couple of times, the Audio Magic Oracle was incredibily better, however, this companies new line of power cables was brought in and found to be very very good with many components.

And for the record Walter very few people who have read our posts have actually bought anything from us..

One example was we started a post on the Micromega M100 series of products because no one was paying attention to this remarkably good integrated, this was before there was even a single review on it.

Several people ended up purchasing the Micromega because of our posts, and loving it and posted their own threads on the user experience after they got one, we got nothing from it.

We talk about Innuous servers because they are extremely good, etc.

As we mentioned before we bring in more new equipment in a 6month period to a year then many very large stores who are much more brand conservative.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

RS507 most of the people who are gripping about our "sales" tactics would never be our clients anyway. 

You can take these forums for what they are an exchange of ideas and you are free to contact us  or not to see for yourself if we can make recommendations that will better your system.

We are brining in the new Coda Point 8 after hearing of the improvements to Coda's amplifiers on this forum, we sold Coda years ago and loved their products but were not aware of how much better their amplifiers have gotten after making a change to a new output device and a couple of other changes and we didn't start that post TJ did.

We are also sure that our posts on the new Krell XD series of amplifiers have also helped draw attention to their new sound and new products which are really excellent, while some see sales pitch others see an informative post on a new product they didn't know about. 


Brownsf flew me down to San Francisco and after two days of working on his system we had created a system which challenged really expensive systems and there are a few other storries of people who have visited our shop and came away with either product ideas or learned ways to improve their systems.

We recommend an approach which includes using system tunning accessories to bring out the sound you are looking for.

Maybe Rs507 you should give us a call and see for yourself.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ 

As some have been adamant about, you can post anything you want until the moderators close it down. However I think most of us here don’t like spending time in a stinky restroom with others. Rather, probably most like the sharing of a hobby we enjoy. Some things you just do in private. And just because someone else did not, do in private what they should have, doesn’t logically give the other the excuse to hang out dirty laundry. Let us grow up and enjoy our hobby.

Lamlowen hardly we get a lot of calls and emails daily and there are two of us $12K is my lowest price and your interpretation of what constitues junk for a warrantied set of floor demo amps is very different than ours the amps looy look great in person and sound terrific if Troy offered you $11k for a $38k set of amps you should have taken it.

Nor are the amps 2 generations old the art amps were current up to 2 years ago when the Art 300 came out only difference is change in output tubes which can be easily changed if anyone cares.

Dave owner
Audio Doctor NJ

I had a post removed by a moderator - I wrote,
"Loquacious, quasi advertising is a disappointing use of the forum."
Where's the compliance issue??? 

Gwbeers maybe the moderators thought your post was off the target this is a post about amplifers remember.

Does Jim Smith not recomend products that he uses to tune systems?

@waltersalas     He clearly doesn't capeesh. His answer to you makes that pretty obvious. Most self aware people would take a hard look at themselves if that many people were trying to tell them there was something wrong with their behavior. Not these guys, everyone else is wrong and they are being singled out, at least in their minds. I didn't realize it was possible to be that obtuse. 

Gwbeers maybe the moderators thought your post was off the target this is a post about amplifers remember.

That was exactly my point.

Cmgolf you fail to realize we have many fans aside from people like you who are not. 

Gwbeers thanks for seeing our point.