Chris, I hesitate to say this for fear of offending someone, but I'll say it anyway: the Crown Macro Reference is, in my opinion, a harsh sounding amplifier. And listening to only one speaker, quite possibly with the bias set too low, is hardly a meaningful way to judge the sound. Doubling the number of speakers (acoustic sources) played at the same SPL as one (and obviously using twice the power since two amps are working at the same level as one was) results in a 3 dB increase in SPL, not a large increase but audible. On the other hand having a stereo image will greatly benefit the presentation.
John's (Jafox) suggested approach is good. While your VT-200 may not be the last word in amplification it should be a nice improvement over the big Crown amp, so take it along for the followup listening session when the system is up and running fully.
Recently I posted the following response to a thread elsewhere related to matching amplifiers, which I hope is of help:
Brian Walsh
John's (Jafox) suggested approach is good. While your VT-200 may not be the last word in amplification it should be a nice improvement over the big Crown amp, so take it along for the followup listening session when the system is up and running fully.
Recently I posted the following response to a thread elsewhere related to matching amplifiers, which I hope is of help:
The sensitivity of Sound Lab speakers, up till last year, was published as being equivalent to 88 dB at 1 meter at 1 watt input, measured at 4 meters, but in terms of real world performance they're more in the range of low 80s at best, meaning they tend to work better with healthy amplification to spring to life. Those built since early last year are on the order of 3 dB more sensitive, which certainly helps, and they're livelier, more responsive, and cleaner sounding.I should add a disclaimer that I'm an authorized Sound Lab dealer.
Because Sound Labs are mostly a capacitive load, the impedance is relatively high in the low bass, falling with increasing frequency to a dip to about 5 to 6 ohms in the 500 to 550 Hz region, above which the separate midrange/treble transformer sees the signal and raises the impedance some and then the impedance drops off gradually with increasing frequencies. The impedance at 20 kHz is 2 ohms or less depending upon the setting of the brilliance control, which poses a difficult load to an amplifier but thankfully there isn't a lot of energy up there. The panel is driven full range, fed by the two separate step up transformers in the backplate to smooth the impedance curve, although it's still a tough load.
I don't have any recommended current capability for amplifiers to use, but solid state amps reported to work well include Parasound Halo JC-1s as well as some larger models by Krell, Levinson, Pass, Boulder, Bryston, and Rowland, and I have some experience with some of them. I understand the Innersound ESL amps can drive Sound Labs to high levels and can be very price competitive, though they might not be as clean and grain-free in the treble as some of the others. For solid state, I recommend a good beefy amp of at least say 200 watts per channel, and more is better. Perhaps it won't always be the case. With tube amps there seems to be more variation in the amount of power needed. I've had a 100 watt per channel beast in my system that left little to the imagination, while 250 watt monoblocks from another manufacturer didn't fare so well. With Sound Labs, a hefty amplifier power supply is very important whether the amp is solid state or tube, as are output transformers if they're present - an amp that skimps on output tranformers probably won't drive the speakers as well as a less powerful one that gets 'em right.
If you have other questions or comments, please feel free to contact me offline.
Brian Walsh