no offense taken. I thought you made some good points.
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I had Maggie 3.6's with Bryston 7B-ST's. It's an awesome combo. Maggie's love power, and power will help with the bass. I also supplemented with a REL sub. The biggest surprise to me vis-a-vis the bass was the addition of a Maggie/Cardas wire kit. The improvement was jaw dropping. Mye stands help too, but not as much. Good luck, Rich |
Hold it, Tireguy. I did believe the Parasound was superior--until I received the Classe back from the factory and it had been upgraded. The upgrade took it to a level that went way beyond what the Parasound can accomplish, I think. I will put the Parasound back into double-check, but I don't believe it has the same power reserves, finesse, and control. This is not to say it isn't an excellent amp and may well be able to power a more modest speaker like the 3.6. |
I recently heard the 3.5 with the Rowland Concentra II and they sounded marvelous. We also listened to the EAR 509 100wpc tube amps which were not quite as tight in the bass but very similar in many ways. The maggies need at least 100wpc to come alive. They have also sounded good with the Bryston 4BST, ARC D300 ss amp and Sonic Frontiers SFS80, but the latter at 60wpc was too polite in the bass. Jallen |
I just upgraded my amp to a used Levinson 334 and it sounds great especially with a tubed pre-amp (ARC LS15). Check the review of the Levinson 334 in Stereophile (Sept '99). They can be had for as little as $2500. As for the power (125 wpc) they provide all I need even on my Maggie 3.6s. I've heard good things about Bryston's and Maggies (my brother recently bought a 4bst to go with his 1.6s but have not heard them - he's in Boulder, I'm in San Diego). |
Gladstone why don't you have Wolcotts then? So then what amp under 12k do you say would outperform them? Stop trying to stir up turmoil(lord knows you love to :^)- you know they're REAL good for the money, you even said so here. In fact you thought they were better then your Classé until I purchased a pair on YOUR recommendation and then all of the sudden the Omega is better- come on I'm not going to play THIS game every time I have to reply to your trolling. Tubes may be better, however I am not willing to deal with tubes, my life is to hectic to add tube rolling, tube replacement and amp warm up into the picture(sometimes I only have 15 minutes to listen!). In my real world enviroment tubes don't make sense- I should have mentioned that in my first post. |
Wolcotts. Tireguy is giving you insufficient information about the JC-1s. They're not the best; they're good, and that's where it starts and ends. They lack the articulation and refinement of the Wolcotts and bass control of some other more expensive solid-state amps. In short, they're overrated, which is to say they perform at their price point and no more. |
If you can find a proper tube amplifier, word up is that is a much better way to go. Magnaplanars can reveal quite a bit that you may not want to hear from a transistor amplifier. Although usual word is that you need a 'high current' amp for these speakers, it turns out that this is really not the case. They are fairly easy to drive and in a lot of cases 80 watts is plenty on the speaker *if the amp is happy with the load*. This of course has been the 'traditional' issue with tubes on Magnaplanars. However you might check out zeroimpedance.com, as the ZERO has provided an elegant (and reasonable)solution to this difficulty. The result is you can have the delicacy of tubes with authority and punch at the same time. |
Disclaimer: I am an audio dealer who sells some of these products. I had a set of MG IIIa's in the store a few weeks back and played around with some of our store amplifiers. The Pass X350 on up and Wolcott P220M's are the two best I have heard. The ARC vt100 is quite good too but can run out of power. For cheap the little EL-34 based Conrad Johnson MV's are very very good - just don't expect enormous power. The surprise hit is the Quad 909 amplifier. Sweet with tons of power. Absolutely superb match (it's pretty good with Quad 988's too !) In general and in the past I have found that Magnepans typically sound their best with tubes. The trouble is that they eat tubes like there is no tomorrow. There are a few solid state amps I have heard as a good match but that does not seem to be the general case. Sometimes the Maggies can sound transistory or lifeless with these. The first generation Krell KAV amplfiers fall into this camp (the new KAV stuff is supposed to be outstanding). |