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RE: Sony Class A, think not


Well, to be fair I have not owned a high power Class A amp for fear of heat and massive idle power draw. The 'largest' Class A amp I had was the 50wpc Krell KSA-50s but I know it put out much more than that.

Although they received rave reviews in their day, the Pass Aleph 3 and Aleph 30 sounded smooth but a little veiled to me and not very dynamic. This may have been a power issue at 30wpc 8 Ohm, 60wpc 4 Ohm. I was running my 91dB 6 Ohm nominal Tannoy D500's which normally sound pretty nice with about 50wpc of tube power but they really come alive dynamically with more.

I went through a phase last year searching out a nice sounding solid state amp to replace the heavenly Manley Neo-Classic 250 monoblocks. These beasts ran hot with 10 EL34 tubes each and sound incredible mated to the Thiel CS2.4. I think Thiels and tubes are a match made in heaven. But the Manleys were expensive to retube and ran very hot.

I was on a mission to find relatively cool running solid-state amps that I could live with.

The Wyred4Sound SX-500 ICEpower Class D monoblocs sound good but I was surprised that they couldn't deliver realistic well defined bass which I thought Class D was supposed to excel at given their use in many subwoofers. The vacuum tube Manleys were much better in with bass detail making the W4S almost 'monotonic' in comparison. However, the W4S do sound much better than the ICEpower based Bel Canto M300's I owned years ago. I sold the W4S monoblocks.

A couple used Bryston 7BSST2 monoblocks came on the market and they were significantly improved over older Bryston from a couple decades ago. They were smooth and powerful, ran cool, with tight bass, and good treble extension. Unfortunately, they sounded very bland, dry, and sterile. The Brystons lacked 'soul'. I tried a couple tube preamps with the Brystons and that helped but it was still an uphill battle and finally surrendered and gave up. Sold the Brystons.

I'm a real fan of Rogue tube gear and when they came out with their well reviewed 'hybrid Class D' amps I thought I would give it a try. Rogue mates a tube input stage to a modified Hypex UcD Class D module. The Rogue Medusa amp arrived and stayed in my system for about a month before I boxed it up and sold it. I thought it sounded worse than many 'standard' Class D amps that use off-the-shelf modules stuffed in a fancy box.

I now have a couple Ampzilla 2000 2nd Edition monoblocks. These are 300wpc Class AB amps each with 2000VA power supply transformer and hefty heatsinks. Yet they idle and run barely warm to the touch. If an amp can be the polar opposite of another sonically, I would place the Bryston and Ampzilla at opposing ends.

As much as I like the Ampzilla monoblocks I have them stored in the basement now that I am confined to a smallish home office listening room. Hence, my search for an 'office size' integrated amp.


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