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In Reply to: Good amps for MMGs/1.6s posted by Charles J P on November 2, 2006 at 13:03:57:
I have been doing much research on driving my 1.6s.I looked at Rotel, Outlaw, Bryston, then Bel Canto. I talked to some local peeps and listened to their rigs and I have narrowed the field down to two contenders.
It will either be something from Audio by Van Alstine (http://www.avahifi.com/) or one of the Stratos models from Odyssey (http://www.odysseyaudio.com/). You can read up on both of them over on the AudioCircle forum.
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I've used a lot of different amplifiers with Maggies - IIBs, 1.6s, SMGs, and MMGs. I've been using CJ amps for a long while now - updated/upgraded MV-75s, a Premier 11A, and Premier 12s. Having used tubed amps for such a long time, just to see what things were like on the other side, I bought and used some solid state amps. I really enjoyed the "standard" Odyssey Stratos (with the ps cap upgrade) with MMGs and 1.6s. If the Extremes are as much better than the standard amp as people report, they might be the last amplifier/s most folks'd need.My girlfriend, while not an audionut and doesn't have the descriptive audionut vocab, has very discerning ears and binary preferences. She preferred the tube amps, but if I weren't so committed to tubes, I could probably have lived happily with the Stratos.
I agree that you can have too little power, which is something like saying you can't have too much power, but after decades (of course I probably learned all I need to learn in about 2 years) of Maggie ownership and using them with probably dozens of very different amplifiers - big money/small money, big power/medium power, with combinations of all those dimensions - I haven't found they need enormous power.
Of course, there're lots of variables that can influence power requirement - your room size, listening distance from the speakers, the type of music you listen to, how loud you like to listen, etc. After nearly a year of running 4 CJ Premier 12s, one into each panel of a pair of 1.6s, I'm downsizing having not found any benefit to this multi-amp configuration. In fact, I don't think it sounds as good as just two amps. These amps are approx. 140w each. Talk about the first watt. These amps were napping through their speaker-driving duty. I was just burning through a lot more tubes, a lot more electricity, throwing a lot more heat, and taking up a lot more space with 4 rather pricey mono amplifiers.
I have, and I'm now using, 2 venerable, updated CJ MV-75s, which gives me 4 channels of 75w each, or 150wpc bridged mono. I'm doing the same thing with these 4 channels as I was using the 4 CJ Premier monoblocks. At 75w into each separate panel of the 1.6s, these amps are snoozing through driving duty, too. I'm probably always within their Class A operating range.
While a 35wpc Dynaco ST-70 might not be enough to drive any Maggie model in a way most of us would like (I used to use one on occasion with my MG-IIBs), I enjoyed the single Odyssey Stratos with 1.6s and MMGs. There're lots of amplifiers in a class similar to the Stratos. I think any one of these would be dandy. In this price range there're also lots of choices for good 70w-120w'ish tube amps.
I did the deal with Klaus. I have a souped-up Stratos HT-3 coming in '07 to drive the 1.6s and the MGCC-1. I will also be getting one of his Khartagos (the standard stereo version) to drive the Mirage surrounds.
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Love my Odyssey Extreme monos and monos on each of my Maggies in a 5.1 system! The addition of my non-stock ModWright SWL9.0SE gives me goosebumps.
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