Higher powered but efficient amp with the imaging of a Pass XA-25?


I had an XA-25 for a trial driving a pair of Spatial X5’s (97db efficiency). That combo produced imaging depth like I have never heard before or since. But my room is big at 25 x 25 feet and the Pass couldn’t cut it at reasonable levels (too noisy). Now the Spatials are gone, using KEF Reference 1 with Rowland 535 monos. The KEFs are NOT efficient (85 db) and require some real grunt from an amp.

Does anyone know of a high powered (200-500 W/C), high current, balanced amp that is reasonably efficient (unlike Pass) and which can produce the layered depth and finesse of the XA-25? I do not want to go all tubes in my power amps. Hybrid is OK.

I have ordered a tube preamp (Rogue RP-7) to replace my Benchmark LA4. I think that will help but I doubt it will get me all the way there.

Thanks in advance.

markmuse

If I do it will be for a pair of Joseph Audio Pulsar2 Graphene

You got that right!!!  I’m with you brother. 

Russ +. Nailed it.

Three out four of yours are good choices for new speakers.

I am buying one of them now.

I would swap the SF Olympica for the Amator Electa III.

That would be my ideal choice of those 4. Add a couple nice little RELs

and you are up by 200% from where you are now.

I just changed to a Coda Continuum 8 with my Kef reference 3. It makes beautiful  music. 

 

Thank you, everyone, for sharing your experiences and recommendations. You have given me plenty of food for thought. I will see what changes the Rogue preamp brings and then make some decisions. If I can remember I will update this thread but it likely will be 6 months or more.

...I had an XA-25 for a trial driving a pair of Spatial X5’s (97db efficiency). That combo produced imaging depth like I have never heard before or since.

The Spatial is an excellent speaker and easy to drive. But since you have to keep the speakers closer to the wall behind them, its probably not a good idea to use a speaker with rear-firing information. If less than about 5 feet to the wall behind the speaker, the reflected information will be interpreted by the ear as harshness rather than imaging detail.

But I think if you liked the Pass, going to a more efficient, easy to drive speaker is the way to go. All amps make more distortion driving difficult loads! This causes them to sound less musical.

With most amps out there, you'll find that tube amps do a better job of imaging and depth than most transistor amps. So the tip about keeping the speaker easy to drive will play very well into the idea of a tube amp if you go in that direction; it will also work nicely with the Pass if you still have it (that amp is fairly low power so you'll need a speaker that has efficiency in the high 90s, like the ZU Audio stuff).