Muralman1 - Yes I can see how tube pre + Pass might work well on Apogees. That combo didn't quite do it for me with my Maggies (3.6/R), but of course different systems, cables, listeners, etc. Not just midrange aspects, but a tube preamp seems to ripen up the bass too much for me. I agree that pure tube amps on magnetic planars can sometimes sound slow. (One exception is the Wolcott 200W monoblocks I once home-auditioned....nice but a bit pricey).
I actively biamp my Maggies in order to optimize the bass versus mid/high performance separately. Experimented a lot with various SS amps, and some SS/tube combos for the two amps. Finally settled on using 2 Llano Trinity amps because of (1) their control of the panels, (2) their sonic "tuneability" by rolling the input tubes, (3) just fewer tubes to replace than pure tube amp, and (4) overall reasonable cost of the Trinity amps. (The choice of the 2 input tubes makes such a huge sonic difference with Llano that one must be careful in auditioning one of these amps.) E.g. I like 6DJ8 in the mid/high amp (for detail, imaging) along with 12AT7 in the bass amp (for full yet tight bass). All NOS of course (Maggies are too revealing for anything less).
I'm not sure whether the Trinity is pure class-A either. I use the Trinity 300W for bass and the 200W for mid/highs. They both run too hot to rest your hand on, though. (Definitely not "cool-running" amps). But seems like a 300W class-A amp should get even hotter than this....
I actively biamp my Maggies in order to optimize the bass versus mid/high performance separately. Experimented a lot with various SS amps, and some SS/tube combos for the two amps. Finally settled on using 2 Llano Trinity amps because of (1) their control of the panels, (2) their sonic "tuneability" by rolling the input tubes, (3) just fewer tubes to replace than pure tube amp, and (4) overall reasonable cost of the Trinity amps. (The choice of the 2 input tubes makes such a huge sonic difference with Llano that one must be careful in auditioning one of these amps.) E.g. I like 6DJ8 in the mid/high amp (for detail, imaging) along with 12AT7 in the bass amp (for full yet tight bass). All NOS of course (Maggies are too revealing for anything less).
I'm not sure whether the Trinity is pure class-A either. I use the Trinity 300W for bass and the 200W for mid/highs. They both run too hot to rest your hand on, though. (Definitely not "cool-running" amps). But seems like a 300W class-A amp should get even hotter than this....