Hall of Fame: BIGGEST BADDEST Monster Amps


There have been a lot of posts on:

"tube amps with balls"
"amps to drive my 1 ohm, inefficient speakers"
"amps for rock and roll"
"Levinson, Krell, Bryston, Pass Labs etc"
"sounds more powerful than its rating suggests"
"despite low rating, puts out huge current" etc.

But I somehow find these threads divergent and confusing and still cant seem to short list a new set of monoblocks to biamp (low end) and COMMAND my Magneplanar Tympanis, fill up a large room with EFFORTLESS dynamics and CONTROL the bass with no debates, questions, reservations or tweaky failures.

So let's please hear your thoughts:

What are the all time, hall of fame, MONSTER power amps, where there should be no doubt whatsover about HUGE amounts, of effortlessly dynamic, clean, smooth, audiophile power.

I have to think that for the low end of biamping, this should be a solid state amp, unless someone can really suggest an unusually robust and low maintenance tube amp.

Mark Levinson 20.6?
Pass X-600's?
Bryston 7 B monoblocks?
Parasound monoblocks?

Thank you.
cwlondon
I've owned and used the Denon POA S1 and compared it to Atma-Spher MA Mk3.1 tube amp for six months before I could decide which amps I wanted to keep. I chose the Atma-Sphere but would go back to the POA S1 any time. 235wpc effortless and especially good for the low end. A truly remakable amp.
CAT's! My Levinson 336 went bye bye after a very brief comparison with CAT JL1 mono's. When compared to my Levinson, the CAT's absolutely controlled my Soundlab M1's and at "only" 100w/ch vs the Levinson at 350w/ch.
How about the new McIntosh monoblocks. I have seen them only in pics, they look powerful.
For me it would definetly be my Levinson 336. It's quite a step up from my Linn 5125 (which itself is not a bad amp).

I love this thing!
I had a HUGE Altec 9440 amp connected on my pretty inefficient spendor BC3. When I would play it full blast, the huge level meter would barely oscilate! Never seen anything like that. It felt like it had no power limitation. And it sounded really well too. But it was a bit heavy to move... 56 pounds!