smooth, powerful, vivid

tube replacements

this amp makes wilson puppy 5.1 sings. Unbelievable soundstage and imaging. Instruments and voices are palpable and 3 dimensional.

Very Live sounding

Its a tube amp and sooner or later youll have to replace the tubes

It was a very long road finding a amp that would satifsfy my audiophile ear.I was trying to find the right combo for my B @ W 802's. I 'am a audio research person right off the bat but i was upgrading from a D-200 SS amp,and i wanted something much better. I also listen at very good volumes in a fairly big room. I originally only wanted to stay in the $4000 range so i audioned the Krell 250 AV amp. Very hard. Then i moved up the line with the Krells fpb200, fpb300.The Krell 300 was the best of the lot but still hard in my system. Not worth the money in my system. Then a few internet audiophiles highly recommended the Sunfire Signiture because i needed power. After 2 -weeks i couldnt wait to get rid of it. It actually hurt my ears. Someone sayed they had a big amp comparison with a new Digital amp blowing away the competition. Forget it. I have no idea were these people get these results.Then i tried the Bat-500 with batpac. Never liked that amp. I listened to the levisons. Again hard.I finally tried a VT-100 and i liked it but it was missing something. I also liked alot was the ARC 100.2 but it didnt have that magic that the VT-100 almost had. So finally i took home a VT-200. I was trying to avoid this amp because of the price but it was what i was looking for all along. Smooth, Dynamic and vocals are right. Nice and warm sounding but without sounding tubish. It also sounds better with the top off. So there you go. As you can see i did a pretty good search, and even though i spent way over budget, I havnt regreated it since. And iam not saying these other amps are bad it just didnt work with my speakers or my tastes. Long live Audio Research for great products. Now the only thing i lack is a Reference1 or 2 pre-amp. i use now a SP-11 two chasis pre-amp because i need phono.Good piece too.