Matthew,
I normally drive the Totems with a Levinson amp that puts out 200 watts at 4 ohms. I was trying to give the little Music Reference every chance as I really wanted to justify buying a RM200. Now I did not take db readings but I did try to keep levels matched. As soon as I hooked up the tube amp there was an immediate huge reduction in volume. I was kind of suprised because at the level I had it either amp should have only been using a few watts. I thought ok suprising but let's keep going. Sat down to listen and noticed the amp really seemed to be struggling to power the speakers, dynamics seemed restricted and the highs had a bit of a glare to them (this is not normally a trait of this amp). Now I'm kind of bummed and I get out my rat shack meter, with my preamp contol wide open I could barely hit the 80db mark and it was freaking me out to have my volume control set that high. I then tried wiring the amp from the 8 ohm taps and I was able to get a bit more volume but the sound suffered even more. I considered upping the internal gain switches on my preamp but as this would have required a good bit of work and I wasn't too thrilled with my experiment so far I opted not to.
I think theTotems are even more difficult to drive than I suspected and I was probably over taxing the power supply on the 30 watt tube amp. Also, now that I think about it when I got the Totems I spoke with Vince and he recommended sticking with my Levinson amp as I was considering tubes to drive them then.
Scottz, if you were referring to me there aren't many 30 watt amps I would be hesitant to put my Music Reference amp up against, certainly not a Chinese made Jolida or Primaluna.
Wes
