Amplification for Wilson Watt Puppy 7s or 8s

Thanks guys. I contacted Martin Collms, of HiFiCritic, after he reviewed the WP8s and he very much favored high power/current Krell amps. Hes not a fan of any class D amps. He felt they lacked an organic completness to the sound, though he did not actually say he heard the Spectron amps. Of course the Spectrons don't use a switching power supply like most of the other class D amps use, do to the noise they add. My own experience with older Krell amps is that they have iron fisted control of the bass, but their midrange and high freqs may be a little lacking.

I dropped off my Premiere 7 at Spectron for a check up, and borrowed a T+A A1530R 170 watt stereo amp. I was very impressed and thought the combo sounded great, but knew when I got my Spectron Premiere 7 (one transformer per front channel) back, that it would vastly improve the WP8s. Well, I have to tell you after 2 hours of warm-up, and maybe several hours of listening, I did not have the same involvment in the music, possibly the lack of wine at the time. The Spectron was incredibly clean, fast with great frequency extension, but almost like analog compared to digital-there seemed to be a certain sterility that I did not notice with the T+A. Maybe Martin brainwashed me.

With that said, I have left the Spectron on all night and will do some more listening.

My plan is to sell the Premiere 7 and look at a pair of Musician III Mk2 Mono-Blocks, VTL 450, BAT 600, ARC, or Pass X350.5

QUESTION-I notice many of the higher end amps are XLR only. Can I use XLR to RCA adapters with little degradation to the sound, as my CJ CT-5 is single-ended only?

Any other input will be greatly appreciated.

Hello Brett,
Premiere was not designed as a high end stereo amplifier as compared to Musician III (e.g. power supply is of the same type as early Musician III which is far inferior to current Musician III power supplies). It was designed to work, mostly,in home theater. W/P 8 needs much more "finesse" then Premiere can provide. Keep it in mind.
Good Luck
Simon

My only real experience with the W/P 7 was when we had them in our showroom and were using a Krell FPB700CX and it was awesome!! MF Trivista SACD through a VTL TL-7.5 preamp.

Lubes, my recommendation is to go for the APL amp it will drive the WPs effortlessly and the most musical youve heard them much better than my older combo. Good Luck!

Perrew,

Unfortunately, the APL was reviewed poorly in 6 moons, especially in the bass, nor is it available to demo,so I have not pursued that. The Krells may have improved in the upper freqs, but class A generates too much heat for my un-airconditioned SoCal home. The T+A I borrowed sounded pretty good and I would imagine as Mono-blocks would sound even better, but as a relatively unknown, if I was unhappy down the road, I don't think the resale market would be very good.

Spectron has been very supportive, plus they are local, in the event of any problems. So, for now, I think the Musician III Mk2 w/v-caps mono-blocks, will be the path I take.

Thanks again,
Brett