electrocompaniet aw 100 sound quality?

not lush like a tube amp, but definitely not a typical solid-state sound. warm, w/the typical solid-state wirtues of detail & dynamics & frequency extension. i tink yule be quite happy... ;~)

good luck, doug s.

ps - my aw100 & aw75 (used in a biamp configuration) really came alive w/a tube preamp, currently a melos music-director.

Sedond,thanks for the reply and just what i wanted to hear from an owner as opposed to what i picked up from audio rags.The previous owner talked of this amp as one would about the love of there life,and was replacing it with the 180 monoblocks from electrocompaniet.

ears, well mebbe the p.o. was going a bit overboard, but i'm not interested in switching to any other solid-state amps. mebbe if i could afford a mondo set of melos tubed mono-blocs... ;~)

doug s.

I have heard what is likely an earlier version of the amp you bought in at least 3 different systems. It has a warm, rich sound, similar to Rowland or YBA, but the Electro seemed a little looser in the bass. I think I would be careful to match it with a tube preamp (I believe the Melos mentioned above is a hybrid design with a low output impedence). A friend of mine had one and liked it on his Magnapan's. I once heard the Electro in a biamped system with Thresholds on the bass, a Spectral preamp and it was probably the best sound I have ever heard but this was not an average system-the speakers were the WAMM's.

when i 1st got my 1st electro amp - the aw75, it was driving thiel 3.5's full-range, w/no problems in the bass output. the thiels are also notoriously hard to drive, especially in the bass, as they employed an active equalizer to obtain flat response down to 20hz. currently, my aw100, which drives the woofer of my monitor, is cut-off at 60hz, as i have a subwoofer system w/a pair of bridged adcom gfa555's driving the subs, so i can't really make an accurate assessment - at least below 60hz. i *do* know that acoustic upright bass sounds like it's *there*, in the room w/ya! ;~)

re: melos, at least according to them, my pre is *not* a hybrid, but all-toob. yes, it *does* have a wery low output impedence - 15 ohms single-ended, 30 ohms balanced. there's a www that's no longer valid re: contact info, but the info on their most recent product is still up-to-date, for those who may be innerested:

http://www.bitstorm.net/sedrick/mindex.htm

regards, doug