Moving away from tubes. Is this a good idea?


I need a new amp for my Totem Sttafs and REALLY considered tubes. My final thought is that if you don't have a certain pile of money you are only kissing your sister. Have you ever seen my sister? Besides there is a Devel's Tower of a learning curve for me to climb around tubes and I'm really anxious to just sit down and listen without any anxiety (if you know what I mean).

I have an opportunity to pick up a JungSon JA 88-D class A integrated amp. Just one piece of electronics to move onto the rack (but what a BIG piece:-)

I have a relatively med/small room (16'x17'x8'). The speakers are rated 8hm, 88dB, and 100 W max. program.

The amp is rated at 80 wpc, class A, RMS 8ohms.

From what I read the JungSon is about as close to a tube sound via ss as I can get without breaking into the kids xmas fund. I just want a rich full room of acoustical/vocal/instrumental music.

Could you give me your opinion if you think the Sttafs will be underpowered or unmatched.

Thanks.
djh

Showing 2 responses by bdgregory

I'm not familiar with the Jungson, but 80w/c is plenty. Just make sure your rack is well ventilated - preferably have the Integrated sitting on the top in the wide open.

Of course this heat issue is the exact same as you'll have if you were to go with Tubes.

There's no need to agonize over, or apologize for not spending the extra $ for Tubes - SS can be very satisfying.
I have a question to add to this thread - sorry to hijack your discussion Djh.

there's a good deal of attention to self/auto bias merits above. It's certainly easier, but is it better?

I have 3 guitar amps - all tube - and auto bias is an undesirable feature if you're interested in "tuning" your sound. It's not hard to do, indeed in some amps it's really easy. Guitarists pay money to mod their self biasing amps to enable manual bias.

Is this also the case with home audio Tube amps? That is, is it more desireable to have manual bias?