I have been wanting to try using a tube amp.


I have been wanting to try using a tube amp. I am using a McIntosh 6700 solid state. It seems with work and family things that the best I can get most days is maybe 1 hour of music listening with no distractions. If I have to wait 30 minutes for a tube amp to come to temp for best sound, I think I will feel shortchanged. Should I go for it anyway. I have been looking at Raven Audio. I like their cables, but would be rolling the dice, as their is no way to hear the amp in person. Any constructive advice.
mfinch
ralph aka atmasphere asked the critical question... what speakers?

really depends on that...
@millercarbon [
Nighthawk is a pretty good step up from Blackhawk, it uses all their higher end caps.
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I thought the Blackhawk was the step up model from the Nighthawk.
Go for it.  If you love sound there is nothing like the sound stage you get from a tube amplifier.  
I had the Nighthawk and Blackhawk and loved them.  
They should be able to drive your Kantas relatively high sensitivity.  


Looking at the speaker and its specs you'll need a pretty powerful amp, although a lot depends on your room. As far as I can make out (Focal is pretty precious about what specs they are willing to publish), this speaker is four ohms in the bass and 8 ohms in the mids and highs. They rate it at 8 ohms but dual woofers are involved, so the 8 ohms is probably due to the fact that the cabinet is ported, because those woofers are probably wired in parallel. I expect that is also why the impedance dip is around 3 ohms. This speaker is intended to be driven by a solid state amp. 


So you'll be using the 4 ohm tap on the amplifier, although you should try the 8 ohms tap too. With tube amplifiers the efficiency spec is easier to use than the sensitivity spec, because tube amplifiers do not double power as impedance is halved. Focal claims 91dB; converting to efficiency you get 89dB. In an average room in the US you'll need 200 watts to play any music at volume comfortably. If its a more lively room 100 watts will do alright.


You'll want to keep the amps close to the speakers if you can (monoblocks are good for this) and keep your speaker cables short, probably no more than 6 feet.


If you really want to see what tubes can do, a more efficient speaker and one of higher efficiency would allow the amp to better strut its stuff. Tube amplifier power is expensive to get right; this is why there are more efficient loudspeakers.