Which Solid State Amplifier is Making you Happy?


I'm trying to find a new amplifier to replace a Musical Fidelity A3CR. There are lots of candidates: Rowland 501s, Pass Labs 350.5, Levinson 431/432, H2O, etc. What are people using and what has been a good sonic investment? I'm currently driving B&W N803s, so it's a pretty normal load. My MF amp does not offer enough punch or bass control. It flattens out at higher volumes. I'll spend what it takes, new or used. Less than $8K would be nice. All comments welcome.
Peter
pscialli
I've had a Coda amp for some time now and have found it
able to keep up with any upstream changes showing a
difference in the pieces and able to put the peddle to the
metal for power. In any case I feel a high current amp seems to work best overall.
There are so many amps being named, I wonder if there are any bad sounding SS amps (hyperbole). It does seem that SS has come a long way.
Jeff Rowland model 8T most musical satisfying amp I ever had. Second in my system with Acoustats the Levinson ML-2's. They do posses such a transparency and pinpoint placement of instruments but they could not properly drive my inefficient speakers. Eighteen Volts was max, but they can deliver lots of current and even drive a Apogee Scintilla 1 Ohm version.
Do not know how well the 8T performs in the lower impedence ranges (I mean 2 Ohm and below). It's specification says only 250 Watts @ 8 Ohm and 400 Watts at 4 Ohm. A perfect Voltage source should deliver 500 Watts at that rating of course. Maybe someone does on this forum?
Brian, specs for the JRDG 8T at:
http://jeffrowland.com/ClassicSpecs.htm#M8
show a damping factor of 100. This suggests that this amp may not be ideal for driving speakers with very low impedance. If you like as I do the special sound of Jeff Rowland amplifiers, you may have a look at the model 312, JRDG's current flagship. It has a damping factor of 1000 and an output voltage of 125Ohms. Yet, it is to my ears one of the most musical devices I have ever heard. . . plus the usual audiophilic musts of revealing, harmonic complexity, macro/micro dynamics, extension, staging, imaging. You can read a semi-technical sidebar I have just published on this device on the December 2008 issue of The Absolute Sound on page 80, part of my review of the Vienna Mahler speakers. Guido