Solid state amp recommendations for Maggies?

@meiatflask Yes, class A amps do tend to give off some heat. That's why most of them have significant heat sinking as part of the design. My Krell FBP300 gets warm, but not too hot to touch. Nonetheless I'd think twice if I had toddlers around. 

If it were my money, for SS amp, the older Krells designed by Dan D'Agostino or the Pass XA series would be at the top of my list. Bryston and Coda are also solid choices. 

Honestly, with your Maggies, I'd stick with the tube amp and move up to Maggie 1.7is or consider a different tube design like Atma-Sphere M60s, a BAT 6C33C-based amp, or an 845 or GM70-based SET. You could alternatively upgrade your DAC, but that won't make as signifcant a change as amp or speakers, given what you have now. 

You haven't specifically defined what "sound better" means to you...IMHE, EL34s can rock really well, but many of the other tube topologies can provide more nuance, transparency and delicacy that for me, bring small scale acoustic music and other stuff you described to life. Cheers,

Spencer

I have a pair of Magnepan 3.7i speakers and landed on a pair of D-Sonic M3a-1500M Mono amps and I am very happy with the performance of the combo. 

Very happy with my LRS / Hegel combo.

From the several people recommending the Pass Labs amps, is there a strong preference for their class A versus their class AB amps?

Unless you move up to the most powerful

XAs I don't think they have enough juice for

the 86db Magnepans. As I wrote, Pass

recommends the X-series (ab) for Maggies.

For speakers with higher sensitivity I

would choose the XAs.

yes hegels are well known to work exceptionally well driving maggies, and their sound is uber pure and sweet, tremendous imaging

i don't own maggies anymore but am a big big hegel fan