Bgordon,
My experience with active 20s was that output impedance mattered, but gain did not seem to. Both the Joule Electra LA150MkII (8db gain) and the Blue Circle BC3000 MkII (20db gain) worked very well. Both were also balanced in my case, but I personally preferred the Joule. On the other hand, the higher output impedance BAT VK42SE and Art Audio DM-VPS did not work as well in my system. I would think both the Atmasphere and the Sonic Frontiers would also be good choices for ATCs.
The Audio Research is probably at the higher end of what I would want for ATCs (ARC's website suggests 20kohm minimum load), but I have heard from at least one person that it works well.
By the way, in addition to the usual reasons, balanced is helpful with active speakers since many single-ended tube preamps invert phase and you can't fix this by reversing speaker wires as you could with passive speakers.
My experience with active 20s was that output impedance mattered, but gain did not seem to. Both the Joule Electra LA150MkII (8db gain) and the Blue Circle BC3000 MkII (20db gain) worked very well. Both were also balanced in my case, but I personally preferred the Joule. On the other hand, the higher output impedance BAT VK42SE and Art Audio DM-VPS did not work as well in my system. I would think both the Atmasphere and the Sonic Frontiers would also be good choices for ATCs.
The Audio Research is probably at the higher end of what I would want for ATCs (ARC's website suggests 20kohm minimum load), but I have heard from at least one person that it works well.
By the way, in addition to the usual reasons, balanced is helpful with active speakers since many single-ended tube preamps invert phase and you can't fix this by reversing speaker wires as you could with passive speakers.