I honestly think that dual 103s are not overkill although a bit excessive AND expensive (too rich for my blood)... but if you wanted to go a similar route and have the luxury (yes, I said it... luxury) of having the bias switch, there's always used 102s which match the 103 spec-for-spec.
Thanks for the input, Joey. As a satisfied Plinius owner and comrade-in-arms audiophile, I respect your opinion. Then again, I know you are biased and would just love it if I defected from the Pass Labs camp over to the Plinius Pentad.
I will keep mulling my options. The amp will probably be my last upgrade. The source and tube pre will come first.
I'm going to disagree on the issues with a switch. A low grade switch might get in the way, but a well specified and wired switch should do the job quite transparently.
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I’m sure if we look around, someone has already made a quality speaker switch for sale. If not, there is always DIY.
I was hoping you might chime in on this topic. I would certainly be willing to try out a switch and decide for myself if it negatively impacted the sound. I just have not been able to find one designed specifically for the job (and I am not really much for DIY). If you run across a quality switch designed for this purpose, please let me know.
Regarding having 2 different amplifiers hooked up to the same pair of speakers, I can't see why you can't do that - as long as you only have ONE amplifier switched on at a time. On the other hand I can't see why anyone would want to do that. As far as I'm concerned, if your 2 channel system is your preferred choice for music, this should also apply to movies. I am not prepared to accept substandard sound for anything - otherwise I might as well buy a Bose Lifestyle system and be done with it!
I am a little leery about having two very expensive amplifiers hooked up to the same set of very expensive speakers at the same time. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
As for why, I explained that in my earlier post. I prefer Class A solid state or tube amplification for music, but when I get several other bodies in the room for home theater and the projector is running (which puts off a fair amount of heat itself) it just gets uncomfortably warm. Also, if I am using a tube amp, I really don't want the hours on the tubes just for movies.
I have very different needs in sound quality for movies than I do for music. But please understand, we are not talking about "substandard" sound even for the movies. In case you didn't read my earlier post, I mentioned that I am running a Meridian G68 processor into a Sunfire Cinema Grand amplifier for movies. This is super high quality sound and is incredible for movies and damn good for music. But as I said, it is just not quite the level of quality that I require for critical listening to music. I find that I am completely satisfied with this setup for movies, but am not quite there when listening to music. Hence the need for a different amp for two channel, and the accompanying thermal issues if this same amp is used during movies. Thanks for your input on the AR pre. I am strongly considering them as my choice for two-channel pre.
I have to apologize to JK319 for
completely hijacking this thread. I hope some of this discussion is useful to you.