looking for a warm ss amp....


for my paradigm studio 40s. i hate a bright treblely sound! i currently use signal cables and a denon 3802 reciever. i have had many people tell me to go with bryston or anthem, but both have been out of my price range so far. which of these have a warmer sound? how would rotel or b&K amps sound with my speakers? they seem to cost much less. since i can only buy used, i really do not have the opportunity to audition the different amps. i will continue to use the denon as my pre-amp.
128x128fishcall

Showing 1 response by stehno

Fishcall, inherently, some to many to most solid state amps simply are not known for their warmth. Especially at the lower price points. They are typically (and hopefully) noted for their speed, articulation, and sometimes better control of the bass regions than tube amps.

I would guess that more than likely if you found a 'warm' solid state, (unless it's a pair of $20k monoblocks), you'd be giving up quite a bit elsewhere.

But there are a few exceptions:

The Sim Audio Moon W-5 has a very nice, even a bit sweet sounding, but it's bass is somewhat congested. The W-5 retails for $5k but can be found used for about $3k.

You might try the Rotel amps. These are known to be on the dark warm side of life and usually have more than ample power to drive most any speaker. I've listened to a 200 wpc Rotel amp at a friend's house with very inexpensive metal dome tweeter speakers and was quite impressed with the sonics of the combination.

If you want warmth, bloom, speed, articulation, and bass control at an excellent price, look for a McCormack DNA 0.5 Revision A amp. There was one here on A'gon just a short time ago selling for $1500 used.

But regardless of which amp you go with, you most likely will not be too impressed with the sonics until you replace the receiver with a pre-amp.

-IMO