Tube-amp for Magnepan?

My experience with magnepans of various sizes is that tube amps can sound great on them. I had the ARC VT150se monos on 3.6rs and it was sublime.
The problem is you never reach the limit of the speaker with tubes.

I had Audio valve monos too but the speaker always sounded sluggish and did not express the feeling of music being alive as the ARCs did.

However when I tried SS amps I found the speaker became much tighter and was capable of higher SPLs and clearer dynamics. I had Plinus SS amps which seemed voiced very closely to the ARC tubes, but with more control in the bass. Unfortunately they lost a bit of soul in comparison to ARC.

The most impressive sound I ever heard from my maggies was with the Halcro DM38. I didnt know my maggie could make that kind of sound! For a lot less money and 97% of the sound try Belcantos old evo gen2s, or the newer ice power models. The ref1000s will be great on them.

I know you are looking for tube amps, but see what the speakers are capable of before dumbing them down. If you just want romance at low to medium levels a tube amp will be fine and will be a fine listen.

I think the bottom line is Maggies will work fine with various tube amps of around 100w and over, but at the expense of dynamic swings which is a weakness of plannars anyway. Plus you will never get high volume levels with out the sound of the diaphram hitting magnets. They need to be controlled to squeeze that last bit of life out of them.

Hi Germanboxers,
come and listen to some Avantgarde trios and you will understand what I mean by dynamics and dynamic swings, large or small. It is Just about the only weakness Magnepan has IMHO.

Your amps are lovely. I heard them on Zu speakers. They are very nice and I bet useful in winter.

Go and find a massive attack cd like Mezzanine or something and turn up the volume. You will soon find the panel compressing and sounding diffuse and masked just before the rattling starts.

Funnily enough the Halcro with its seemingly low power output compared to some, nearly made this disappear... nearly. The most open I ever heard maggies sound. I think it was more to do with the speed of that amp. If money was no issue a pair of Halcro DM88s on the 3.6r would be something.

Hi Atmasphere,

A nice list of which I have most.

To be very anal, which version of Tour de France soundtracks do you have?

I have the original and the remaster which came out a few months ago. I was shocked when they brought out a remaster. I always felt the original was as state of the art as was possible!

Suffice to say I found the remaster to be even cleaner although by a subtle margin. I think you have to play the original and the remaster side by side to really notice. A classic electro album.

A great test of a system. If you can hear the pitch modulation moving through the snare and various reverb tail automations you are doing quite well.

The heart beat on electro Kardiogramm sorts the good from the great in hifi. The tight, deep chest battering impact while keeping air around the bass frequencies of the heart beat and maintaining the panting accents which shift at different volumes and pitches...

One to try on the magnepan. It would be something to get a sense of the different dynamics playing all at the once there on planars. If a tube amp is controlling a 3.6r and showing all that...buy it.

Hi Germanboxers,

I understand and I do take your point about maggies vs power vs dynamics.

What I was trying to get across was that in my experience to squeeze that last bit out of them, in the end you need power. But you can drive them with any amp really.

Once you get into the 3.6r and 20.1, I think power becomes much more important if you want to push the volume.

I know we are getting off topic, but I like the Zu. They seem good value.

I heard them with the Atmasphere 2 box preamp MP1 and I think MA1 monos (may have been another power amp in the range) with EMM lab 2 box cd player. The sound was lush musical and involving.

It took a lot for me to move away from planar speakers. The Trio was the only candidate that did it for me. I found it did all that planar magic. ie nice size soundstage, naturalness, speed and so on, but with the kind of freedom,separation and clarity I could never get out of Maggies or Apogees, quads, martin Logans.

I even had extreme modifications on the maggies and Apogees which made huge improvements. But still no contest as fantastic as they sounded.

I often wondered if Magnepan could improve the sensitivity with more powerful magnets etc. In the same way Apogee did with its Synergy speaker. High sensitivity even with the advancements in amplifier technology still makes so much difference.

That effortlessness you mention I have not heard in low sensitivity. It is much better than it was with the latest amps, but still not quite. I have even found myself hearing the Avantgarde Duos which I think are 104 db/watt and finding them a bit flat and less 3D! So I am stuck. I know Goto make 118db/watt speakers, but the tweeters are $80,000...

Drop me a line sometime, you are welcome to have a listen.

I hope you dont mind me asking, but what is your audiogon name a reference to? I have an image of the car you drive, the country you live in, or the pants you wear!

Hi Germanboxers,

Lol. Obviously that was going to be my next guess.

My wife is german. I know exactly what you mean...!