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Solid State amps known to sound good with Klipsch


mark1101

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Decided to change it up. Put the Bob Carver Sunfire cinema grand's and it's respective pre through its paces for the first time. I think it looks rather nice. 

Where the Marantz 2500 is clean, cool detailed and softer the Sunfire is tad warmer, "harder" meaning a tighter grip on the music in it's detail and faster. A beautiful combo. This won't be a "I'm hearing things I've never heard before" kinda speech. It certainly is different in the way the music is presented. More modern. Together it's better in it's presentation than the Denon 3803 and Yamaha rx-777 where the latter was too bright and forward and the former not as detailed. 
Might stay this way for awhile.

IMG_20170715_155641.jpg

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Nice! Love the Sunfire / Klipsch combo, has worked great for me for several years now. If you really want to hear some Sunfire "magic" find yourself a Sunfire tube Pre, you'll thank me if you do, they are incredible sounding!

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  • 3 weeks later...

I can recommend a class-A. I have driven my Cornwalls with a integrated tubeamp(VSI60), pentode. But since the VSI has little to much watts I decided to build a Firstwatt M2. Now my lineup is a R2R dac, tub-buffer and M2 amp. The sound is very detailed, natural and no harsh tones. Even the bass is lower and more musical. With that comes a feeling of lack of bass. It is just more air. (Sub is for movies)

image.jpeg

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On 7/15/2017 at 9:01 PM, Rxonmymind said:

Decided to change it up. Put the Bob Carver Sunfire cinema grand's and it's respective pre through its paces for the first time. I think it looks rather nice. 

Where the Marantz 2500 is clean, cool detailed and softer the Sunfire is tad warmer, "harder" meaning a tighter grip on the music in it's detail and faster. A beautiful combo. This won't be a "I'm hearing things I've never heard before" kinda speech. It certainly is different in the way the music is presented. More modern. Together it's better in it's presentation than the Denon 3803 and Yamaha rx-777 where the latter was too bright and forward and the former not as detailed. 
Might stay this way for awhile.

IMG_20170715_155641.jpg

Love the Carvers....

Don't have ant Sunfire amps yet....... the operative word....."yet" :P

 

Lately I've been powering my LaScalas with a Carver 4.0t. I push them quite hard with the Carver and I must say they put out more bass with that amp than any amp I've used. Really like that set-up....even my wife has comented on the sound of that combo.

 

MKP :-)

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I admit it's been quite some time since I realye spent serious time in front of my Khorns (but that is not relevant for this thread), anyway - one thing I did not expect that I would have something positive to say about solid state equipment and Khorns. The reason? Well, many years ago I started off with a McIntosh combination that many people have praised here - MC2105 and C29. To my ears that combo was not really to my liking (too strident) and led me a long way down into tube territory - and then came other speakers so the Khorns kind of retired.

Anyway, lately I have had the idea to try a moddified MA6200 (better parts in the signal path) with said speakers - and to my total surprise this turns out to be a really excellent combination - actually it's so good that I cannot stop listening - and that has not happend for quite some time.

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  • 2 months later...

I think Sunfires really works well with Klipsch. I have the Sunfire 300 Two, connected the HF to the current source for a more "tube like" sound, and the LF to the voltage source for a tighter low. RF 63 and RF83 are in the picture, but I prefer the 83s for music, the 63s are in my HT. In my HT i have a Sunfire Ultimate and could not be happier, switched from a Yamaha RX-V679 and haven't looked back, IMO its in a different league!!

Klipsch:Sunfire Low Res.jpeg

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I am currently using a Peachtree pre and Peachtree 220 amp (borrowed from another setup) this combo works well so far. I have a Belles 150A coming soon and it will replace the Peachtree 220. I will give my impressions once it's here and set-up and I've had time to listen.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've never had anything fancy for SS amps, and never owned tube anything but TVs.

 

Today I'm using Yamaha 3070 AVR for the 7.1.4.  I think it sounds best with YPAO: Natural.  Seems to work well for the RF-7II, but I've not heard them on another amp.  (Oh that's not true, I had them on my Outlaw 5000 for a bit, but the amp has recently developed some noise issues, possibly a ground issue I need to figure out.  It used to be silent.)  Voices are very real sounding (movies/shows).  I can be in the other room and can't tell, sometimes think it's my wife talking to our children (this is with a RC-64II also).  Music sounds very good to me, either in multi or when I really want to sit down and listen I use 2.0.  I think the Yamaha amp sounds slightly better than the Outlaw.  I may bring out my NAD to hear the RF-7II on that so I can listen for differences. 

 

For my Forte II, I'm using my old NAD C372.  I haven't heard the Forte II on anything else either, as they are "new to me".  The Forte sound very good, take me by surprise at times just how good they can be. For the first time in a long time, I actually just want to sit in the sweet spot and close my eyes to listen.  I either listen through a mid/entry level Fluance record player, or Tidal or FLAC files served from a PC through a Schiit Modi multibit DAC to the NAD.  This also used to power my SVS Ultra bookshelf speakers in this room.  The SVS and the Forte II sound very good to me with this equipment.  The SVS I have heard also extensively on the Yamaha, which sounded good, but they sound better with the NAD setup.  I might take the Fortes to the main room and listen to them vs the RF-7II from the Yamaha.

 

 

 In the past with many other speakers I've had Denon, Yamaha, Adcom, Carver.  The Carver was delightful to my ears at the time, but was paired with relatively low end Polk Audio towers which sounded quite sweet and natural to me. (many years later, the Polks are still singing along, gifted to my Mom).  A huge improvement over the Bose 601 towers I had before that (I was young and impressionable with what speakers the BX carried at the time - bought the Polk at a Circuit City and hastily sold the Bose when I heard the dramatic difference).  The Carver was the CM-1090.  I loved the little power gauges, silly as they may be.  Wish I still had that thing.  What pushed me into ditching the Bose, was exposure to very good systems thanks to a good buddy of mine who was a bit of an audiophile.  He had a pair of B&W CDM somethings, large towers, incredible sounding compared to what I was used to.  We would traverse the audio shops of Vegas and demo systems that blew me away.  The Bose then sounded...well I have nothing good to say about them.  

 

An odd experience I had with a pair of KG3.something, they sounded terrible with my Denon, terrible with my Adcom pre and NAD 2155 (which was great with everything else). (in both cases terrible = lifeless, no dynamic anything, dull and boring)  Then I paired the KGs with a cheap Yamaha AVR and they were dramatically different in all the good ways.  A bit of harshness when really cranking along, but they rocked the garage surprisingly well.  Never figured that one out, by all rights the TOTL Denon I had should have handled the Klipsch with aplomb, and the NAD 2155 (only 55wpc but with 40amps of current) made every other speaker sound so very good to my ears and drove them all tirelessly without breaking a sweat.  Why did this low end Yamaha do so much better with the KGs?  No idea.  I just enjoyed the results.  To this day that setup is in a friend's garage pissing off the neighbors on a regular basis.

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  • 2 months later...

I’m going to second Nikko components. I currently have or have owned an Alpha II, Alpha III, Alpha 130, Alpha 220, Beta 20, Beta 30, Beta 40,
EQ I, EQ 20, CO 23, and a couple integrated amps that I can’t remember the model numbers of... all have been fantastic pieces, well designed and generally easy to work on/recap.

 

I am also currently running a Marantz 1070 upstairs with what I will call a modified pair of Heresy’s and enjoy it. It replaces a Sansui AU317 that I also liked quite a bit but needs work currently. Despite both amps pushing relatively low wattage, I’ve never turned either up past 50% and both have had excellent bass response. I would like to, at some point, check out a few power/pre-amps from both brands... though I am thinking my next acquisition will be either a McIntosh MAC4100 or MC250 or both?

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  • 1 year later...

Recent experience with SS amps running RP6000f.

 

Note. Generally speaking I run music out from a Tidal account.

 

I tried the following amps and dacs in various combos ...Rotel RA 1210/Cambridge Azur 540/Cambridge A1/Pioneer 401. Topping and dragonfly dacs. The Topping DAC with the Cambridge 504 as a pre-amp running the Rotel 1210 was good. Rotel on its own was too sharp. Pioneer was too sharp. Cambridge A1 lacked power and the Cambridge Azur tipped up the bass too much.

 

I finally punted on a Powergate and discovered it sounded best with its internal (and apparently 'noisy') DAC as opposed to being hooked up to either the Dragonfly or Topping.

 

Set up on WIndows 10 was a 'no go' as far as the drivers were concerned, so dug out an old Windows 7 computer and 'Boom!' - silky highs and punchy tight bass.

 

When I sat back and thought about it, I got to reckoning that a speaker manufacturer can easily enough build an amp to suit their kit, whereas the same can't be said coming at it from the opposite direction (eg - Cambridge making speakers for their amps)...maybe because there's more 'art' involved in speaker manufacture.

 

Anyway. I'm thinking I could probably have spent 'forever' buying and selling various older SS amps and swapping them in and out with one another to get where I've finally landed up. And for under US$200.

 

The only step I'm thinking to make is to get me a Klipsch KDA 500 DSP. I reckon that'll be the train pulling into the station at that point. Thoughts?

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