High Powered Holographic Amplifiers

Actually a correction, no_money although I believe you are on the money with Arye and it is jwpstayman that mentioned the McCormack amps but both posts I find agreeable.

@twoleftears I am new here but not to hifi. I think those posts you mention were also rude.

I saw no reason to attack the op. There are people who have never heard a "holographic" sound. Having been part owner of 3 stereo shops in a 30 year period, I can attest that there were plenty of people coming in who never experienced this effect.

My "room" is completely untreated and has lots of noise provided by my sub zero fridge and freezer units.

Sup folks,

I’m surprised respondents in this thread hasn’t jumped all over this part. I’ve been using Magnepan MMGs as my mains for the past 16 or so years and through several homes. One thing is for sure the room had a huge impact on the sound overall. His room is untreated, but that doesn’t speak to what’s in it. I’ve found regardless of the furniture and carpeting (which I don’t believe makes as much as a difference with planar speakers), controlling room modes and diffusing the back wave make a big difference. With equipment like what he has, yeah I think better cables are in order, better made cables, I’m not so sure that means $300 a meter, but just something constructed properly to lose the noise and not affect the signal. I’d suggest looking into room treatments before dumping money into a new amp. You might even play with speaker placement some more after you implement the room treatments.

With that said, I’m in a new home in CA and while flutter echo isn’t bad, I’m sure I’ll need to tackle room modes, just waiting on my gear to ship from NY so I can do some testing and have some fun with my old stuff before my Tekton Moabs arrive. I pretty much ordered speakers that are more expensive than the supporting gear but when I had everything setup and tuned right in my last listening room my XPA-2 amp, two polk powered subs and denon receiver (wish I could remember the model) made some magic. I got usable bass to 18hz and solid 20hz with deviations of 3-6 db through 18khz (I can't hear past 18.5khz) in some areas, nothing crazy, I think I got lucky with that space, it was not your usual dimensions or construction.

The wife and I talked about it and before we dump any money into electronics, treating the room will be 1st priority and then work from there. So, I’ll probably spend another $1-1.5k on room treatments (got rid of some stuff before I moved, I didn’t think I’d be using it anytime soon) before I worry about throwing a couple times that on new amplification. I might even look at a better pre-processor before the amp.

TL;DR Treat the room... And maybe put those noisy devices (fridge, etc) on isolating pads, or consider modifying the motor/compressor mounts), I think Herbies Audio Lab is a good place to start looking for isolation pads.

Kind Regards,
T

The holographic sound you referred to is from the driver tubes in the amp. I am very familiar with the characteristic. Unfortunately that is actually a non linearity from internal resonances in the driver tubes. You can actually kill a lot of that characteristic if you want by experimenting with different driver tubes. The highly sought after 0TK tubes from the early 1990s will not exhibit that characteristic much yet they are a faster and clearer sound which I prefer in my gear.
I have had direct experience with the Maggie as well as my apogee divas. Both want more power always and more is really never enough to get the snap that less hungry speakers have. My friend here in Vegas has the 1200 watt mackintosh monos on his Maggie’s and it just is not enough to let them break free. That is the most powerful amp I have heard on the 3.6r and while not being enough power it also doesn’t have the magic. I cannot think of any amplifier that has the power and magic that you want. All of the amplifiers that are being mentioned are going to be more linear/flatter although they still sound wonderful. 
ARC amps started getting my attention when they came out with the Classic series in the 90’s and while the 240 had that characteristic the amp that had it the most was the 30 watt one. That was just magic but not a ton of power at all. It’s amazing that the 610t even exists to tell you the truth and you are just not going to find what you want for those speakers in a high power offering with more juice than the 610.

 Planar magnetic/ribbon speakers with neodymium magnets are your answer. The sensitivity is just about triple and you get everything you want from it with a lot less power which opens up a whole host of amplifiers. Unfortunately there’s only a few fringe manufacturers offering those. Graz in Australia of Apogee fame offers that as well as a few European ribbon manufacturers but all are multitudes more than the relatively low cost of Maggie’s.  
I can tell you this, you will spend a ton of money looking for the magic amplifier and will not find it. But the same amount of money that the big Pass  or Dart Will cost would be better spent on a higher effiency panel design. There’s just never enough power for the Maggie as long as they are using ceramic magnets.

I have been around audio for many years but in the lower end solid state domain. The most holographic demo I have heard was using VTL amps with a wadia cd player and relatively cheap (11,000) Proac speakers. The resonances and spaciality of the perfomance venues and the players on even quite old recordings e.g. Stevie Ray Vaughan were as a quite startling hologram. After a while I realised that there wasn't the solid state bass slam though, but still an excellent effect. Not sure I want to live with it on a daily basis though.