Stereo or monoblocks

Most important is the sound of the amplifier once integrated into your system. Pick the one that sounds better. Second, I prefer mono blocks because I believe they have the potential to sound better but more important you can use shorter speaker cables that can be expensive, so the savings there can be put toward the greater cost of the mono blocks.

Two amplifiers that I own (both excellent) are dual mono

EVS 1200 (TweakAudio)

Voyager GaN 350 LSA

Im pretty sure there are others

Especially if you have speakers of less than 8 Ohms, speaker cables can be critical- monoblocks allow the speaker cables to be shorter, thus reducing the artifact they might impose. If the monoblocks have balanced inputs, this can allow the interconnect cables to have no 'sound' of their own as well.

The power supplies of the amps are obviously not shared so the power for the amp will be cleaner. This can allow the amplifier lower IMD which is audible. Because there can be less current limitation to the power supply bass impact can be improved.

I recently went to a pair of Mc611's with a c49 after trying many different stereo combinations. I wish I would have tried mac a long time ago. Speakers are Kef Blades.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

Those are nice speakers and Power amp. 400 a side will do fine The mac is a great brand.

Compression driver means efficiency and Jbl dual woofer want current

he mac should provide well.

Crazy enough Crown Comtech units are cheap and would provide very cost effective power  in mono blocks.

So I'm at a crossroads... I presently have two tube monoblock amps that can act as separate integrated amps (80wpc/8o). I feel like I'm losing some of the value since I'm paying for an integrated amp, but only using one amps features. I do like the sound, but I'm wondering if two 8k integrated amps paired in mono would out shine a 18k integrated amp built specifically that way from the ground up?

So if price being equal, but one is a integrated that can act as a mono amp, would it outshine a dedicated equally priced (in principal more expensive) stereo amp?

Thoughts?

So you have two integrated amps. You are using one as an integrated and the amp as a monoblocks… you are only using the second as a mono amplifier?

Ok, with nearly 100% certainty that is not optimal use of funds. First integrated amps are a compromise by putting so much circuitry in a small footprint. Then buying duplicate preamps… then bridging… yes, that is not optimal from any point of view.

I would skip the integrated if you have room. Optimal would be something like a $8K preamp (personally I would get a used Audio Research Reference) and a $10K stereo amplifier. That should be a huge upgrade. 

Late to this post, but I'm running a pair of mono Schiit Aegir's to power my LS50 Metas and I love the sound. 

Using a Parasound P7 preamp for both it's multi channel capability and it's balanced outputs.

I initially had one Aegir, but it just wasn't enough to power the Metas so I bought another and I'm glad I did.

I also have a pair of small REL subs to give some more heft to the bottom end, but even without those the sound is very nice.