Interesting discussion, which I am joining late. I recently (about a year ago) purchased a pair of Magnepan 1.7i’s These speakers are not particularly easy to drive, so I knew I would need a few watts. Having blown my budget on the speakers, I went searching for a bargain amp.
I found a Parasound H2200 (300+ w/pc rms) on ebay for about $400. This seemed to have plenty of power, but the speakers did not sound like they did in the dealer’s listening room. The dealer was AR dealer and he auditioned the speakers with some pretty high end tube equipment.
I tried a couple of different SS pre-amps, but was not satisfied. Finally, I decided to try a tube pre-amp. After doing a bit (a large bit, actually) of research I decided to try the Transcend 6SN7 preamp (can you guess what kind of tubes it uses?). Wow!! Now I can’t say if they sound as good as they did powered by all that Class A tube equipment, but this seems to be a good pairing.
The Aric Audio gear really opened up the sound of the Magnepans. Maybe someday I will try some Class A Tube power amplification, but I don’t know how to compare the numbers (How does 68w Class A amplification compare to 300w Class A/B under a difficult load?)
Anyway I am satisfied for now. And my next $3000 expenditure will be for a nice (fairly) high end double boiler Cappuccino machine. Priorities. :)
