Rogue Audio Tempest ii and Tempest iii

I own a Tempest II Magnum. Since the III was released I communicated with Rogue to find out what the differences are and what the update cost is. From what I was told, there is the headphone amps you mention plus a switchable active line stage. The II's line stage is purely passive. If your source components have enough output to drive the amp you'll be fine with the II. With the III you can get an additonal 10 dB of gain. It's not tubed gain but rather Rogue uses an op amp chip made by Analog Devices.

Bottom line is that if you don't use the active line stage the II and III are the same. With the active stage I would imagine there must be a difference because you are adding a solid state active device.

I ultimately decided not to convert my II into a III. I have a headphone amp, so I don't need that. I always have enough input voltage on phono and tuner, and almost always have enough input voltage on CD. I ultimately decided tht if I wanted some line level gain I woud add a seperate Pre amp. So far I have not taken that route. In the past I owned a Pass Aleph P preamp. I suppose if I found and Aleph P or an Aleph L I might jump on it.

I suppose how efficient your speakers are will make a difference.

The active line stage is quite nice and makes the amp capable of working with more speakers. But you definitely should get one with the Magnum or Super Magnum kits. The demo unit in our local shop has the Super Magnum kit and sounds quite good. It started its life as an early generation Tempest but has been upgraded, twice maybe. It has never sounded better.

Well that clears it up for me. I think I may take advantage of claiming a used tempest ii, as opposed to shelling out more for the iii, and if its a magnum, I won't worry about upgrading. Thanks a lot.

Reynolds, thanks for the tip. I have my eye on a magnum version.

I have the tempest III and don't use the additional gain, also keep it in triode.

I just wanted to second Stevtt's preference for triode mode on the amplifier regardless of whether the active gain is used.

Also, I have the M180 monoblocks and have been using Gold Lion KT88s in them since I got them three or so years ago. I recently tried a set of KT120s in them and didn't like them nearly as much. The GL KT88s were more holographic, textured, clearer. If you have the opportunity to upgrade the amp to the GL KT88s it is worth it in my opinion. If you are getting the amps from Rogue, just ask Mark O'Brien about it. There will be an up charge of $100 to $200 I guess, but I would recommend it. And if you are not getting the amp from Rogue and it doesn't come with the GL KT88s, you can eventually upgrade from Rogue, which is my preferred route since Mark rejects tubes that don't pass Rogue's quality requirements.

I'm considering adding the tempest ii magnum into my home theater to run the two front channels (Nola Viper iia). Can the Tempest handle such a task?