B&K vs Adcom – opinions please

Wow- tough choice as far as I'm concerned. I have used both the Adcom GFA 535 and the B&K ST140 amps to drive a pair of Magnepan SMGa speakers in the late 80's. I liked what both could do with these relatively inefficient speakers in the small room I had them in (12X15X8). I no longer have the Adcom, but I still have the ST140 and use it in my second system. Excellent products for the price. I have not used either one of the preamps, but I liked my amps! Not sure how big your room is but I believe the 1400 and the 545 put out about the same WPC. In my situation, I felt the Adcom was a little warmer sounding where the B&K was more forward in it's presentation with the SMGa's. YMMV....

I too have owned the ST140 as well as the Adcom 535, 545 and 555. Believe it or not, the Adcom GFA-535 is, by a good margin, the best of the lot and puts out quite a bit more power than the rating would suggest. Perhaps it is due to it having seperate frame transformers for each channel as opposed to the single toroidial in the other amps. The B&K and bigger Adcoms just sound glazed and sluggish compared to it.

Funny thing about opinions, everybody has one. I too have owned all the above amps and completely disagree with the previous posts. The adcoms are all highly mediocre sounding amps with flat 2 dimensional presentations and somewhat dry and brittle high ends. They have very good to excellent low end control and power but can sound overdamped on speakers that already have tight bass. The B&K's have a much warmer and full bodied sound with a lot of the palpable presence one gets with tube amps. They may be slightly less detailed than the Adcoms but present a much more musical overall picture. The bottom end on the B&K's is not as tight as the Adcoms and will sound a little plump on some speakers. The bottom line is I still own and enjoy the B&K's and the Adcom's are long gone and not missed even a little.

I have to agree with Infinitebaffle, I still have B&K M-200's with Cardas output posts and Cardas cables, Shunyata P/C's, and they sound fantastic, just my 2 cents.

Infinite brings up a great point. So much of this stuff is system dependent and listener dependent that recommendations must be taken with a grain of salt. My fast and direct is his brittle and two dimensional, his musical and warm is my sluggish and glazed. One experience that I found with all of the inexpensive amps was that a tube preamp could really minimize some of the shortcomings of these budget perfomers.