I’m still resisting lol.
same I guess I will be staying solid state unless I can save for ARC. Thomas response to me about the Doge - LRS pairing:
For me, I would not buy a tube amp for LRS unless I want to gain emotions from my setup. The problem with the R8 is that it distorts at normal high volume. The Cayin can handle better but to get the best emotions out of it, you need 6550 coke bottles tubes. The LRS by nature already creates an airy soundstage so as much as the Doge 10 adds to it, it is still not taking advantage of Doge strength. The Doge 10 will drive it the best among these 3 but to have true effortless power, you will have to go to the Cayin CS100. I say keep what you have if you are enjoying. LRS needs power man and I personally say go Solidstate.
That’s not a shocking answer tbh. Maggies need current and no matter how good a tube amp may be, it will always suffer in comparison to SS in the current dept. I’m running my .7s off 700w class D monoblocks.
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1 last option I wanted to kick around before I shut down buying before New Years…
Parasound Halo A23 - OG for $675
Do you think this + a decent Preamplifier (Freya+ or Parasound P5/6) would be better than the Hegel H160 for the Maggies?
There is also a Halo A21 listed near me but it’s quite a bit pricier and with a pre-amp would likely be out of my budget.
Would you take a swing at the Parasound/Preamp option or just stay put with Hegel?
Solid price, you could try to get him down like 50 bucks but that’s probably not worth arguing over lol
Hmmm. I would actually say no. The h160 is going to have better control over the lrs imo, and it’s going to yield a more satisfactory experience (although the parasound might help with tonal density and perhaps a bit more bass body)
I think if you aren’t looking to go for the a21, I would stick with the hegel. The hegel just has pretty good synergy with the lrs, and I think to get a significant upgrade from it, you would find yourself spending in the 2k range for a power amp alone imo
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Thanks Mon!
I’ll just keep saving my pennies for something like this for next year then:
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You seem to want to get rid of the Hagel for some reason. If you’re not getting the sound you want I’m pretty confident the Hagel is not the problem. Look into room treatment, speaker positioning, etc.
yep I’m working on that as well but I’ve spend a considerable time working on room spacing and have the sweet spot worked out quite well. Room treatments are coming in as my “christmas present” but the weak part of my chain is the Hegel. I upgraded the Dac so I am bypassing that. But I think I can do better on amplification + preamp than the H160… Possibly it’s either going to ARC or going to something higher in Hegel chain (H300 or H360).
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1 more point I forget to add… I also have a pair of 1266 Phi TC hps that I’m currently unhappy with the synergies on my HP Amp side. I’m in the process is getting a LQI ( XLR 4 Pin Female to Speaker Taps - Banana) cable to start running from speaker taps. I’ll definitely try out the hegel before I make a move on the amp side but my motivation to improve amplification is two fold to improve the LRS sound as well as the 1266 synergy.
That should be pretty great, very curious to see what you think of the changes
Thanks Mon yeah I’m anxious about it too!
I’m not cable / adapter expert but if it were you would you go with the regular cable/adapter or the extra thick? Not sure if extra guage size would be beneficial for running Hps directly from speaker taps? Cable length will be 3-4 feet and then the abyss xlr cable is like 9-10 feet.
Personally I would go extra thick since I do think that the gauge size will end up helping out the bass body and control. Also you can brag about your EXTRA THICK cable as well
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I can also get it in bananas or spades would you have any preference on termination at the speaker taps side?
Personally I prefer spades, but banana are more convenient
I prefer bare wire - less connections = less potential degradation of signal. And definitely less resistance. But bananas are definitely more convenient.
Might as well solder the wire to the binding post at that point too lol
But I would agree bare wire is technically the best, after that I would say spades, then banana. To me spades make the most sense in terms of not being a total pain but making a better connect than banana
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yeah I’ll probably go bananas as my LRS are currently hooked up through spades… so having two sets of adapters will help so I don’t have to unplug every time I use.
Except when I want to run the HPs the Maggies will play which will be a PITA to take them out each time… The best best would probably be to hookup Maggies via bananas and the HPs through spade to make it easier to pull out each time.
Probably need to think about this a bit more… thanks all for the input!
You could always get a speaker switch box
That’s even more connections 
lol. Audio nervosa and all that…def the most convenient method though.
If you didn’t care about quality of wires and something that would be good enough, this would work and is something you can order through Amazon
Or you can go a more custom route. With this all you would do is hook up both the maggies and the 1266, and then when you wanted to switch, just turn down the volume, turn off the amp, switch, and then turn back on the amp (you probably don’t have to turn off the amp when you switch but it’s the safest way, still no unplugging anything though)
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