solid state amp for merlin tsm's ?

04-22-11: Samski
"after doing some research, it looks like the merlins are not for me,"

I would not come to that conclusion based on the fact folks recommend tubes - they sound fantastic with SS as well, but not all speakers sound great with tubes due to impedance curves yadda yadda, the thing is when a speaker also happens to be tube friendly, like the Merlins, they tend to sound better with tubes because tubes tend to sound better than SS IMHO. Don't miss out on one of the truly great speakers for fear of the tube buzz, try'em with a high quality SS amp, you won't regret it.

Well said, Pubul. Naturally there's some bias for my Merlins, but I have a lot of love for other speakers as well. For a short while I had the Merlins powered by an Emotiva XPA-2 and the UMC-1 processor. You can't get more mismatched than that, at least according to Merlin. But I wanted to hear exactly how "crippled" the TSMs would be by such a combo. I'm not going to say anything crazy!. The TSM's lost some of their ghostly imaging and midrange finesse, but I seriously doubt anyone would have been less than thrilled with the sound. I have a friend who ran an older set of TSMs with a Creek SS amp and the sound was great.

Rob

Also consider that the Totem's you're considering actually require tubes moreso than the Merlins - the Totem aluminum tweeter is going to sound smoother and less fatiguing if tube amplification is used, whereas the Merlin soft dome tweeter sounds fine with good SS. In the past I had great results with the Magnum Dynalab receiver with the TSMs, and the other Simaudio amps (SimAudio co-designed the original amp secton for Magnum Dynalab's receiver) would work well also (for example I owned the I-5 integrated from SimAudio and it sounded great with the TSMs). You will not be disappointed by the TSMs - I also bought them before hearing them, and the result was that I was simply amazed at how great they sounded, and this was 10 years ago. I now own the VSM-MXe with the new Master BAM and RCs, but I could definitely "get by" with the latest TSMs - both Merlins are fabulous music makers and the closest thing to musical truth I've ever heard.

Ditto on the Totems being bright to my ears. Though it's always important to remember that this is a VERY subjective issue. All speakers have specific colorations. The trick is to discover the speaker that sounds "right" to your ears.

PS: I recently heard the GMA Eos HD....a fine speaker, but I was even more thrilled with my TSM's when I returned home.

Has anyone tried mating the Luxman 505u with the Merlin TSM-MMi's? Any experience would be GREATLY appreciated. I currently am running tubes but want an amp that I can just leave on for long periods of time.