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the best 'tubey amp - warm,smooth,liquid' ?

i'm using the word 'tube' as the meaning of warm,smooth and liquid sound.
but i could't compare to some tube amps like mcintosh(mc275), cary(cad 805), arc(vs115) and conrad-johnson(premier) at one place and the same time.
some say mcintosh lean, cary weak and not bloom, arc not tubey and cj no clarity.
i need your experiences and advices.
actually i have a difficulty to match speaker systems with.
zabiaud

Showing 2 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
For those speakers and your goals, the bel canto ref1000m or 500m class d amps might work well. They are smooth and liquid sounding i would say though not inherently warm though results in that regard may vary depending on speaker and preamp used. I use an arc tube preamp with mine to very good effect in that regard.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
I had a 360 w/ch Carver m4.0t SS Tube Transfer Function amp for many years.

This was one of Carver's efforts to "voice" a SS amp to sound like a tube amp and was reasonably successful at that.

A corollary to that was that although it went plenty loud and clear, and did well with my speakers that were relatively tube friendly at the time (Magnepan, Triangle), it was also not able to deliver balanced sound top to bottom with my other less tube friendly speakers (B&W, Dynaudio, OHM) despite also going plenty loud.

FWIW.
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