Plinius 9200 Driving Magnepan 3.6Rs

If you can hold your hand to the fire [sorry], that sounds about right for a typical Class A amp. A less subjective measure would be to procure a digital or analog meat/oven thermometer and place it on/near the heatsink. 120F is the maximum value I'd want to see. My 35W class A Death of Zen runs there or slightly higher when pushed, which is rare as the speakers are high-efficiency and thus tax the amp that much less. Some feel No amp should be driven hard, but with Maggies the point is academic. That said, nearly any modern, well-designed [for 4 ohm loads] amp should work well. The Plinuius certainly falls in this category. If the PLinius is brigeable, perhaps a second one might solve the dilemma. But that's a lot of money to throw at this potential non-problem. Keep us posted and good luck.

UPDATE: I found out after talking to Plinius that their amplifiers run in class AB but in a very high bias mode (nearer to that of Class A than Class AB). They say it is normal and preferable for this to be the case and that provided no clipping/distortion is present, the amplifier's performance is not based on volume level, etc. just how cleanly it can drive the load. Apparently, Magnepans are basically purely resistive in load (easy to drive) as opposed to some boxed loudspeakers which have varying impedences (between 8 all the way to <3ohms) over the frequency spectrum. So ultimately, the trade off for me is efficiency. I will continue to auditon and make a decision based on my newly gathered information from all of you and Plinius (thank you!!).

I have a Plinius 9200 also and I was thinking of getting the Magnepans 1.6.I wanted to know if you had any problems driving the 1.6 .I would like to also know what was the sound quality.

Hi. I had a Plinius 8200mk1 and was using it with the 1.6QR. I have a large room (20x21x9) made even "larger" with opening to one side and it's very taxing for the amp. The 8200 doesn't have enough power so even if your 9200 is more powerful, I serioiuly doubt you could drive the 3.6 well at all. IMO, you either keep the 1.6QR with 9200 or get a bigger amp with 3.6.

As for volume pot location not an indication of how hard you are pushing the amp but use clipping as an indication instead. I got similar answer from Plinius (but did say 1-2 o'clock is o.k.) and from Krell (my present 400xi and had tried 110 out of 150 digital volume).
My 2 cts.

Plinius is not the answer for Maggies. Just not a good match. Try Parasound JC-1 monoblocks, or any of the Bryston amps that produce more than 400W at 4ohms. But the big bad boys your really want are Innersound. Read some reviews, you will realize they are mades SPECIFICALLY to drive this type of difficult load. No heat from the amp as well. Mono 800's, or the ESL 300's great amps.

Good luck