The Best Solidstate Amps, The Most Respected Solidstate Amplifiers
We’ve been wondering about just who would be on a list of the top contenders for the Champion of the World in several categories of high-end audio equipment.
Contenders are either the products we know to be great and hearing them several times actually *sound* great, those that we suspect to be great, and those that are generally considered to be great.
Note that some of this has to do with fashion, and some has to do with popularity, and some to do with actual performance.
To put it simply, if you won the lottery today – what would you want to audition tomorrow?
Solid-state Amplifiers:
[This is such a hard category. There is such a lack of satisfaction with SS amps amongst audiophiles it causes a new heir-apparent to be nominated approximately every 6 months. The previous was Soulution. Before that it was Vitus. Before that it was Gryphon. Before that was Boulder. Now it is Technical Brain? D’Agostino? ]
MBL (sound)
Ayre (sound)
Nagra MSA (sound?)
FM Acoustics (rep)
Soulution (rep)
———–
Others? Anybody? Remember they have to be recognized as a tip top performer by at least some percentage of audiophiles.
There are a TON of solid-state amplifiers out there. But do people really like any of them? Or is it just reviewer hype?.
If you want to nominate others, please leave a comment!
If your preferences to a solid state amp is not sheer power, if you want to have all the magic, you normally get only with tubes or more precise – with SET amps, than I would suggest Nagra´s MSA amp.
If you will make a blind test with their new push pull 300B amplifier, it is not an easy task to find out which one is playing at the moment (a pair of speakers, which does fit to the limited power of the 300b is absolutely necessary of course).
It is amazing haw this company is doing their transistor stuff in the last years.
They are now far away from the sterile sound of their discontinued pyramid amps – and if you compare the Nagra BPS with the VPS it is also amazing, and shows clearly what the people in switzerland have in mind.
Somtimes I think that the technology behind their products is something these people are not so much interested, they manage to get their house sound with tubes and with transistor technology.
If you do not mean with tube sound something which is rolled off at the top and muddy and limited in the bass section, if you mean with tube sound amazing microdynamic and inner detail, 3d sound and this hard to describe magic – than the MSA is one of the amps which uses a very minimalsitic transistor topology and can give you exactly that.
But keep in mind the MSA has only 60 Watt per channel…..but you can buy two and bridge them….
If you match the MSA with the Nagra PLL, which is a tube preamp, than you get something, which is very seductive and sound like a lot of full tube systems want to sound.
Greeting from Berlin
Ekki
Hi Ekki,
I considered the Nagra tube amps for the tube amp list, but, although we have heard them in maybe a dozen systems, none of the systems were revealing enough to … reveal 🙂 … the amps intrinsic character and differentiate them from being ‘average’.
I did not think the Nagra pyramids were so bad, myself, however, and the general consensus does indeed seem to be that the MSA is better: I’ll add the MSA to the SS amps list.
Thanks for your post, and greetings right back atchya from little ole Boulder!
Take care,
-Mike
Finest I have heard is anything from Viola labs. Beautiful rich, powerful with immense soundstage
There are a TON of solid-state amplifiers out there. But do people really like any of them? Or is it just reviewer hype?.