I have the Sophia 1's in a similar room. My room, however needs a significant amount of power to adequately pressurize the space with lifelike bass. The bass characteristics of your room need to be a primary issue in your choice.
The Sophias LOVE tubes. If your room is easy to pressurize, the Audio Research VT 100 will be a good choice. I needed more power and picked up a demo pair of Audio Research VM-220's. A gorgeous combination of accurate tonality , great. huge stage and great bass. I had a Cary V-12 with 50 triode watts and 100 watts ultra-linear. Small scale music was gorgeous with the 50 triode watts, but large scale performances never achieved life-like scale with 100 tube watts.
I was never able to audition a Macintosh amp with the Sophias but one of the customer service guys at Wilson Audio felt his favorite combo with the Sophias was a tube pre-amp and a MAC power amp.
I felt the Pass X250.5, while good, lacked the tube magic that my Audio Research Monos have.
The only solid state amps I auditioned that I liked a lot were the Jeff Rowland
201 mono-blocs. They are slightly recessed in the high frequencies, which, depending on the characteristics of your room can be a great match. The Sophias tend to be "revealing" in the high frequencies so careful matching is the key to the phenomenal realism they are capable of producing. Listen to many amps and the proper choice will be obvious.
The Sophias LOVE tubes. If your room is easy to pressurize, the Audio Research VT 100 will be a good choice. I needed more power and picked up a demo pair of Audio Research VM-220's. A gorgeous combination of accurate tonality , great. huge stage and great bass. I had a Cary V-12 with 50 triode watts and 100 watts ultra-linear. Small scale music was gorgeous with the 50 triode watts, but large scale performances never achieved life-like scale with 100 tube watts.
I was never able to audition a Macintosh amp with the Sophias but one of the customer service guys at Wilson Audio felt his favorite combo with the Sophias was a tube pre-amp and a MAC power amp.
I felt the Pass X250.5, while good, lacked the tube magic that my Audio Research Monos have.
The only solid state amps I auditioned that I liked a lot were the Jeff Rowland
201 mono-blocs. They are slightly recessed in the high frequencies, which, depending on the characteristics of your room can be a great match. The Sophias tend to be "revealing" in the high frequencies so careful matching is the key to the phenomenal realism they are capable of producing. Listen to many amps and the proper choice will be obvious.