I have a 80 watt amp. No complaints. Drives the speakers with ease. Plenty of volume. Doesn't run hot. Would there be any "sonic" benefit to upgrade to a 150 watt amp from the same manufacturer?

 

Probably not unless your speakers demand more power to manage the dynamic range of the music. It depends on the efficiency of the speakers and the power necessary to drive them. Hope that helps.

 

upgrade to tubes.

 

You will have to give more details to get an intelligent answer, aside, I have never encountered a situation where more power was not benificial ...

Regards,

 

The speakers are Magnepan 1.7. Sensitivity is 86 db... 4 ohm speaker. Magnepans are notorious for needing more power. I'm using a NAD integrated amp rated 80 watts at 4 ohms. I was skeptical that 80 watts would be enough but this little amp seems to be doing the job. I've never used integrated amps before or even amps with this little power. Many years ago I ran Krell 500 watt mono amps with Apogee Diva speakers.

 

As long as you are not driving the outputs to DC, meaning clipping the outputs, then you are okay. Sonic doffernec I doubt it, since you never get it up in that range anyway

 

If the amp is properly built, i.e. good power supplies, it should be an improvement, even when listening at similar volume levels. It may sound OK now, but popular theory (AKA audio voodoo) says mids and soundstage should improve.

 

you should get improvement in bass, and bigger soundstage. 86db is a hard to drive speaker. over 90db is fine. get a retailer you know to loan you an amp to take home and try it yourself.

 

And he is asking us if he needs more watts.

You should be telling us.

 

Bass is improved with a high damping factor. if the 80 watt amp is not being driven hard at listening levels, bass will not improve going to a higher wattage amp. Especially if this amp has a lot of head room! One other factor @ what band width is the 80 watts stated. In order to double his volume he will need to 10X the amp power!

 

With your set up...short answer is probably yes.

 

Short answer is probably no!

 

Here you go, 800 watts for less than $100

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Technica...&skuId=4630445

With a 30 day return policy - what do you have to lose?

 

You would gain a little less than 3db in dynamic range and headroom........

 

The 1.7 benefits from Power, i have a good friend who had one before upping to a 3.7 , dont use less than 200 watts /8 ohm on this speaker, he was running his with 400 @ 4ohm ( it's a 4 ohm speaker) Maggie's are power hungry current speakers.

You will also have to play with tweeter gain when adjusting to your room, make sure you have resistors handy ..


PS : You had a better system many years ago ...