Amp recommendation in the $6000 range

Hi Matt,

There has been no indication in the thread that the OP has purchased or will be purchasing a replacement for the Audio Valve preamp that is listed in his system description. Therefore, while the question that was posed relates to selection of a power amp that would be a good match for the OP’s Magico speakers, it seems appropriate to point out that some amps which may be good matches for those speakers will not be good matches for that preamp.

Regards,
--Al

I still have the Eklipse preamp and much of my system remains the same, what's different is I now have a dedicated room and will update the pics in my system in the near future.
A member here PM and alerted me to the D'Agostino Classic stereo, I decided to pull the trigger on it unseen in the flesh and unheard. There's a review on it in the newest TAS and a few who's heard it says it is very good, smooth, detailed, and not sterile. It is a 300 watt stereo amp with core technologies based on the D'Agostino Momentum but in a larger chassis, it also has input impedance of 100k ohm which should match more preamps. I imagine this amp to be some what similar to either the Pass Labs X or XA amplifiers.

scar972, it looks like the D’Agostino Classic does not provide RCA input connectors, and as I mentioned earlier your Eklipse provides unbalanced signals on its XLR connectors.  Which creates a bit of concern as to whether the Classic will work properly when provided with unbalanced signals, similar to the issue I cited that definitely exists with many Audio Research balanced amps which don’t provide RCA input connectors.

I suspect that you’ll probably be ok in that respect, but if you already haven’t I’d suggest that you raise that question with D’Agostino or some other source knowledgeable about the specific design.  In the event that it does turn out to be a problem, a suitably chosen Jensen Transformer (ca. $300), or at a higher price point ($1895) an SMc Audio Flex-Connect, would most likely be good ways of converting the unbalanced signals from the preamp to balanced.

Good luck.  Regards,
-- Al
 

Al, the D'Agostino doesn't provide RCA input but does provide XLR-RCA adapters with their amp, if they offer this, I would expect it to work flawlessly with an unbalanced signal. I have a feeling even though the connector on the back is an XLR, it is in fact unbalanced.

Same goes for the Eklipse preamp, it has XLR output, but the signal is unbalanced.