I guess I'd ask Nedlabs: need refining, compared to what? The Nearfield Pipelines, or the Utopia Grande's? I suppose everyone's ears differ, but the last quality I would attribute to the Vandy 5's is lack of refinement. But with regard to your question: there are a a number of solid state amps that will work very nicely with the Vandy 5's: The Ayre V-1; most of the Krells and Mark Levinson's; Jeff Rowland Design makes some good S-S amps. On the lower end, you should definitely think about the Bryston 7B-ST's and the 4B-ST's and Aragon 8008BB. The New Marsh A400 just got an outstanding review in the recent issue of TAS (review by Tony Cordesman), who said this amp sounds as good as some of the $20,000 amps he has reviewed. (Richard Marsh is the electrical design engineer who developed Monster Cable's new line of power conditioners, as well as a number of other products). So, you've got a fair number of choices. Your listening room acoustics may turn out to a more critical factor than the choice of amp in this quality range.
