Wow! Lots of great info/recommendations/links here! Thanks all--I'll have to do some serious research/surfing/and listening when possible (some of this stuff is available for me to demo locally).......
Quote Originally Posted by Panomaniac View Post
Very nice amp, but I have to ask - how much power do you really need?

With my A5s I need 5 watts (RMS) to get all the average and peak level I want. Really, I've measured it. In a much bigger room the power requirements would go way up, of course.
Good question. With my Model 19's, they are deafening at well under 10 watts per channel. So, I don't really need much more than that--although (more just for peace of mind than anything else) I want to stay with something at least 50 to 75 watts per channel for headroom--again, I'm sure I don't really even need that much but that's what I'm used to these days (75 wpc currently).....

I want to avoid a situation I was in back in the 90's. I had a (decent sized) studio apartment with all original A7's (factory cabs and stock drivers) for my stereo speakers (and I cranked my keyboards, vocals, guitars etc. through them when mixing band recordings and doing overdubs at home). I still remember the girl across the hall banging on my door at 2 a.m. saying something like "I can't believe you're singing at 2 am!!!!". I was really young and really oblivious I guess... My older brother had turned me on to Altecs over 10 years earlier--there was a bar in Brockport NY that had A7's for PA and they were like a beacon of light/holy grail to me (and him)--the set up (soundboard etc.) was amazing and it was the clearest, most detailed sound I'd heard in my life--even when played loudly. Anyways, back in my studio apartment I had a Phase Linear 4000 pre-amp (which I LOVED) connected to a Phase Linear 400 power amp. It would have been appropriate amplification for much less efficient speakers in a much larger room, but in that apartment, I could barely even touch the volume control and it was deafening. My friend as Ashly had to put a new (differently calibrated?) volume pot on the Phase 4000 so I could turn the volume up at least to 1/4 volume without blowing the windows out of the place. He explained (and I could hear) that the original preamp pot wouldn't track accurately (I think that's the term he used) if I had it set at it's VERY lowest range. Of course there were no numbers on it, but if the preamp volume had been numbered 1 to 10, I had it set at .1 (one tenth! barely above 0) and it was deafening until he put the new pot in for me. Not to mention, even when the pre-amp was turned all the way down, there was hiss from the power missmatch (using a 400 watt amp with speakers that need one watt to be very loud). I know Ashly and many other manufacturers now have volume (sensitivity?) controls on their power amps (which I'm sure would help with the noise floor in my situation), but I'm leery of buying another 400 watt monster for home hi fi use. Been there, done that........ Again, thanks everyone for all the input--I can see I've got my work cut out for me. I'm not going to settle for mid or lo fi--that would be an insult to my Altecs....