Best bang for buck integrated amp for $500

Well my rega IO is on the way, but while I'm waiting I went out and bought myself a Cambridge audio axr 85.  Got it all hooked up sounds okay sounded way different in my emotiva amp this amp is definitely on the warm side.  I didn't like it at first it's actually starting to grow on me and sounds pretty damn good for $400.

It has just absolutely amazing mids vocals are crazy good it's got very well controlled and tight base I don't care for the highs that much they're a little rolled off.  So I'm going to wait for the io to show up and see how the io compares to this I'm sure the iOS probably better but I want to hear them side by side and then one of them is going to become my keeper.

I have to say im loving having 85 watts at hand for my Triangles Boreas, wow they love power.  Now im afraid that Rega IO is going to be very underpowered.

Im liking this Axr 85 its nice, its has grown on me over the last 3 days.  I will say the Rega is going to have to really be something special for me to keep it.  Its going to have to wow me and be able to have some balls behind it.

I had Triangle Titus for many years. They did fine with most any amp but also liked a bit more power and current still to perform best. Most speakers do.

THing is some will prefer to hear the sound of their amps more than what speakers are capable of especially if a smaller tube amp like a SET. Not me. I want to max out performance. That usually means do NOT drive the amp any harder than necessary. That is the only way to know what a setup is capable of. If something else sounds better (also maxed out) similarly at that point, so be it.


Maxing out performance with a low power amp in most cases means the choice of speakers suited for that will be very limited and/or a powered sub is needed to fill in the low octaves and maybe offload work..


SO be it if so. Just know what you are getting into and why. It’s all good if one pays attention to the fundamentals. No amount of tweaking can max out performance if fundamentals are not addressed first.


You can easily find yourself in tweaking h-ll which some may actually consider heaven. Different strokes.

You know what I'm thinking is that the Rega IO it's probably going to sound better than my Cambridge 30 watts is 30 Watts I know it varies from amp to amp and it could play louder than it seems for 30 Watts but it ain't going to match the 85 Watts I got in my Cambridge I'm just thinking that 30 watts is going to be underpowered even for my little room I'm in.

And then there's the part where I don't know how well my speakers are going to match up with the io but I could tell you I've turned up the dial on my Cambridge quite a bit and they just scale so much better with power that's why I'm thinking the io is not going to have enough balls behind it.