Amp for Nautilus 801


Any nautilus owner out there help me selecting an amp for my Nautilus 801!
The options I ve got are:
Mark Levinson No. 333
Krell MDA 300
Conrad Johnson Premier 12
Bryston 7B.
My music preference is Jazz and classical,occassionally pop.For pre amp I am using Casablanca II.Any suggestion will be of great help.
thanks
AAK
128x128ali_azamkhan

Showing 2 responses by raquel

The Nautilus 801 is a very difficult speaker to drive and decent shops that sold it bi-amped it with expensive, truly high-current solid-state amplification such as Classe Omega, Levinson, Krell FBP or Rowland.

Unless you limit yourself to chamber music, the c-j tube amp would be totally inappropriate on N801's, as would all but a small handful of tube amps.

N801's also need to be used in a big room with lots of placement options so they don't boom, as they produce prodigious bass. They are also not shelved down in the treble and thus tend to sound bright, especially with digital sources (because most recordings are bright and most CD players still can't do treble). In short, they are hard to use properly and thus not very practical -- are you sure they are the speaker for you? If 90% of what you listen is full-scale symphonic music and rock, if you have a big, well-damped room and if you own megaamps, then okay, but otherwise, there are a many alternatives that are better choices.
Ali:

If the amps you list are the only ones available to you, buy the Levinson, as it is, by far, the highest current amp on your list (it has really big power supplies for a stereo amp and weighs 155 lbs.) that is reasonably young. The Krell monoblocks are even more powerful, but are so old that you should avoid them.

As I explained above, you should really bi-amp N801's, but the 333 is an appropriate amp for N801's.

I otherwise refer to my first post above.