re: Audiophile/Vinyl Thread - Post Pics, Advice, Questions, Setups, etc.

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mardigraspete

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Ok...here goes...


You are going in the wrong direction...

I am very familiar with the SLP-05---had one in the rig for a few months. As far as Pass Labs goes, it is top notch.

However, if you plan on staying with your Klipsch, you should not be looking for more powerful amps, but better, more precise, lower powered amps. That Klipsch speaker is a horn speaker, and has an efficiency rating of 100dB--crazy efficient...which means it will rock n roll with just a few watts of power. You can easily make them sing with just 20-30 watts of power. All horn speakers are extremely efficient and share very high efficiency specs--meaning you hardly need any power to drive the hell out of them.

If you want to do Pass Labs, look into their XA line, which is Class A power for the full bandwith. The XA-30 and XA -60 will be more than adequate. The regular Pass Labs X series amps leave class A after about 10 watts of power and revert to Class AB...hence their way higher watts per channel power outputs. The Pass Labs XA amps are the real deal. It will give you most of the attributes of a tube amp without the tubes!

Same with McIntosh. I would look into an MC275 tube amp for those speakers. That amp is one of the longest running amps Mac has made (50 years and 6th generation now). They are bulletproof and have a voluptuous sound. 75 X 2 watts per channel. The MC275 uses KT-88 or KT-120 power tubes.

Now as far as a pre amp--your call. Some like to mate tube pre with tube amp, and others like tube pre with solid state power. It depends on your preference (and input/output impedences matching too--the old 10x rule here).

The McIntosh tube or solid state pre amp with an MC 275 power amp will be glorious with your speakers.

The pass XA-30 or XA-60 monos and a pass pre amp will also be fantastic. Don't write off Pass XA series--they are really good.

If you want to run with the Cary SLP-05, I would mate it with either an older Cary V-12R power amp (EL-34 tubes...12 of them--60wpc triode or 120wpc pentode) or the newer one that replaced it (forget the model, but it outputs 120 watts and runs about $5500 new--12 tubes I believe--also EL-34s).

I prefer, in lower powered tube amps, the EL-34 tube. The KT-88/90/120/150 tube will give a higher power output, but loses some of that old school glorious tube sound (if that makes sense).

Usually, I like EL-34 tubes in amps 50wpc or less--which is way more than you need with a Klipsch speaker with a 100dB efficiency rating.