Member's recommendations for tube amplification

David,

Well your writing is wonderful. Beautifully communicated and so enticing. Well said sir.   

Hello David,
I find your sunlight analogy for the Double Impacts effective and accurate based on my recent extensive listening session with them. Mated to my amplifier(Coincident Frankenstein MK II) the combination was exceptionally open, transparent, lively/vivid yet at the same time natural and without stress. High resolution nuanced sound but devoid of an analytical character, overall very clear and natural "sunlight" 😊. You captured the Double Impact character well, I certainly heard the same. 
Charles

David,
You’ve received some terrific suggestions and replies. In my humble opinion I don’t believe you’ll find one "best" amplifier choice. Some of the amplifiers mentioned I’ve had the pleasure of actually hearing.
VAC Renaissance 300b push pull
Jack Elliano Electra 300b SET
Atma-Sphere MA -1 and M-60

Any of these (and others) would sound excellent with your Double Impacts. I can’t think of a reason why they would not. Each will bring their individual beauty to your system. Really impossible to say that these or my Frankenstein is "the right choice ". You simply have numerous superb options, that’s good 😊.
Charles

@atmosphere

You got me thinking Ralph, so I wanted to check the output of my Coincident amps with my 97db, 4-6 ohm Omegas.  This is a very crude test since I don't have any engineering test equipment other than a multimeter, so some assumptions had to be made, but here is my summary:
- I played a 1Khz test tone (sinewave) at 90db in my listening spot (damn that was ear piercing, so I put some plugs in my ears, lol)
- My meter read 2.26 Vrms at the speaker terminals
- My calcs show that I was using between .85 and 1.3w to output the 1kHz wave, which places my amp's power output (out of 8wpc) usage somewhere in the 11% to 16% range, which is inline (actually less) than your 20% spec for SET amps.

Does this hold water and put me in the ballpark, or did I miscalc somewhere? What am I missing?

Obviously real world audio is way different from a simple sinewave, but then, I don't listen at a steady 90db either, and I do filter off the low bass from my amp/speakers, which helps immensely.

All in all, these amps really work wonders in my situation.

^^ a 1KHz tone really isn't anything like an actual musical signal, which is a bit harder to reproduce, but the sound pressure meter isn't going to care about that.

The speaker is measured in sensitivity, not efficiency, so to correct for that your actual efficiency is more like 94 db. I'm sure your use of the subwoofer is helping a lot!

I often listen at higher levels (95-100db), but the trick is that at those levels the system does not sound loud. My speakers are 98db 1 watt/1 meter and they are 16 ohms at the same time Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-3). Plus I am usually using amps with 60 watts output and at that power the distortion is quite a bit lower (about 0.5% THD at full power despite no feedback). So the result is less loudness cues generated by the system, which allows for higher volume levels without it sounding loud. Instead it sounds relaxed and effortless.