Tubes for Magnepan’s.

To preface, I'm the guy that looks for sonic treasure at very reasonable price levels.  First pair of Maggies were SMGa, and while the sweet spot for listening was about 1 sq foot, I was amazed at how good a pair of picture frames with thin plastic film and wire could sound, even if not technically as accurate as my Thiel CS3.5 or Altec 604-8G.  I also restore tube gear, had just finished a Bogen DS265, about 65 wpc, and just for fun hooked it up to the SMGa, which shouldn't have been happy with less than 100 wpc.  The sound was remarkable, the stage, every bit as good as the mega SS amps I'd been running, from a vintage Sony TAN-8250 to Spectro Acoustics 500SR to Classe 25, along with scores of others that didn't make the cut.  Fast forward to this year.  Now have Maggie 1.6QR, and they sound great with the same assortment of SS amps as well as 50-70 wpc from tubes.  Picked up a pair of AES SE-845 monoblocks by Cary Audio.  After a bit of tweaking, they benched at 25 watts into 8 ohms at the onset of clipping.  Although volume constrained vs the big watt amps, they sound remarkable with the 1.6QR.  Edges of bass are predictably a tad softer vs SS, but the soundstage and realism is as good as I've ever heard with these 1.6.  Sitting position is about 10 ft from speakers and the amps still have headroom when musical peaks are hitting 83-85 db.  Going to run through the audio library with this setup before reconnecting the SS amps, just to see what's missing when I do.  Bottom line, try some different tube amps at various wattage levels....you may be surprised.  As far as the admonition that tube watts are different, they're not.  But the transition into clipping is much softer than with most SS amps, and the less edgy harmonic distortion of a tube amp creates the illusion of greater SPL.