Vicdamone,
I have a very funky setup. My room is a 15'X24' rectangle. The speakers are on a short wall placed on shelves in an entertainment center. The shelves are essentially closed in boxes of about 13.5" tall, 23" wide and 19" deep.
The area to the left along the wall where the speakers are placed opens into a very short hallway which leads into the foyer and the area to the left of the wall opposite the speakers opens into the kitchen area, which again goes about 15'X20'. It's a lot of open space.
To say that finding speakers, that would fit into the shelves and provide a satisfactory listening experience, was difficult is a vast understatement. Just in the last 18 mos. to 2 years, I've gone through at least six pairs of speakers, to include: Paradigm Studio 10, B&W 685, System Audio SA505, some model of either Harbeth or Spendor (I don't remember which), and others.
What I've landed on that sounded the best in my system that were within my budget are the Silverline Minuets.
I really can't say if they are hard to drive, but right now, I'm driving them with my Aragon 2004, which is rated at a solid 100wpc at 8 ohms and 200wpc at 4 ohms. The amp doesn't seem to be having any problems. Silverline claims that the Minuets are rated up to 300w.
The main reason I'm looking for another amp is that I want to try a D class amp. I'm justifying this to myself for several reasons. The first is that due to the physical size of the amp, I have to put the amp on top of the entertainment center. Having over 40lbs looming over the den area makes me a bit nervous. It also requires that I use speakers cables about 13' long and interconnect cables equally as long.
I'm just figuring that getting into a class D amp will allow me to either get into a physically smaller 2 channel box or two boxes, each of which can be closer to its respective speaker. This will allow me to get rid of the 40lb sword hanging over my head and use shorter speaker and interconnect cables, which I'm guessing will improve the sound quality.
I'm looking at the ICEPower 125asx2 modules because many have had good things to say about them. They are also pretty cheap. The modules are about $250 each. What's really appealing about these modules is that they are totally self contained. Each has its own power supply. All I'd really need to do is throw it into an enclosure, which runs about $100 with all necessary connectors.
The NC400 modules, which everyone seems to be ranting about run just over $400 each and I'll need a power supply for module (to do it right), each of which runs about $250. I'll also need the enclosures, which run $75 each plus shipping.
Hence my dilemma. ICE power at $350 per channel on the outside versus NC400 at $800 per channel. If the NC400 is vastly superior to the ICE modules, then I don't mind paying the difference. On the other hand, if the NC400 will only be an incremental improvement (at twice the price), I could live with the ICE rig for a while.
Like I said, my setup is less than ideal to begin with, so if I can get into a good sounding rig at half the cost, I'm all for it.
I don't have a deep electronics background, so reading the specs tells me next to nothing, except that both modules seem to roll off on the highs at about 16K. This probably means nothing to me. I'm coming around 50 years old and after a lifetime of competitive shooting and riding off road mud bikes, the roll off at the upper end is probably something that I won't even notice.
So...I posted this thread with the hope that someone might be able to offer a direct comparison of the two. Thus far, I haven't had much luck.
Oh, and if it matters, I've even been considering getting an amp based on the 125asx2 from the guy that advertises here in the classifieds. I think his name is Ghent. He's selling mono blocks based on the 125asx2 for around $400 each, shipped. Any thoughts on this?
