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Need Amp Advice

Hey guys,

New member here but music lover for many years.
I am looking to upgrade my amps to get better sound quality and really need some help. I watch movies and listen to music daily. I would say in general, 70/30 (movies 70). I run a 5.1 setup and plan on upgrading to 7.1.4 in the future, but happy with 5.1 at the moment.
When I listen to music I only use the 802's (no sub and no multichannel music).

Currently, my setup is:

Speakers
Main speakers: B&W 802D (first Diamond)
Center: B&W HTM2D
Surrounds: Klipsch
Sub: Klipsch

Pre-amp
Marantz AV8802A

Amps
Emotiva XPA-1 monoblock x2 for the main speakers 
Emotiva XPA-3 Gen 3 for the center and surrounds

The sounds is good, it's actually more than good but I want it to be even better. I have been looking at many used amps (can not afford new ones) and wanted to ask for your opinion on the following that I have considered. I have not heard any of them with my speakers.

1. Classe CM-A600 monoblocks 
2. McIntosh MC501 monoblocks
3. I even looked at the Devialet 200 which was recommended by someone I know
4. Krell?

Do those amps make sense? Am I looking at a noticeable improvement over the Emotivas? I would love to hear from people who know and heard those amps, especially driving 802's.
I am of course open to any other suggestions as well.

Thank you in advance!

killergurt

Showing 2 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,575 posts
 
^^ :) that's pretty funny. You can't overheat the tubes in an M-60 like that!

In fact on that speaker you could run the amp all day at full clipping and not do that.

IOW your metaphor doesn't work in this case. The amp isn't towing a Bayliner or anything like it.

However, I did make a mistake here- I mistook the 802 for a different B&W model and the two are very different!

So I retract my statement about the speaker being tube-friendly; while you can drive it with tubes, you would want to use the 4 ohm tap and keep the speaker cables fairly short. The speaker is 4 ohms in the bass region and 8 ohms in the mids and highs. So a tube amp would use the 4 ohm tap (our larger amps would work with the speaker if a set of ZEROs were employed on the woofer array).

Obviously the speaker is intended for use with solid state when you see a woofer array like that. If going solid state, I recommend Pass Labs.



atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,575 posts
 
We've got a number of customers that use the B&W 802s with our M-60s, so apparently its a rather tube-friendly speaker. Rather than going the brute force powerhouse approach, you might consider going the finesse route instead- it sounds like that's what you want from your original post. Tubes could do that for you as they tend to be smoother and more detailed than solid state (IMO/IME) generally speaking.
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