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Old 01-08-2022, 07:11 PM
SCAudiophile SCAudiophile is offline
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Location: Greenville SC
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Originally Posted by Rick U View Post
Mark I’m using a Mcintosh 452 with my Aeris speakers. I see you are running Legacy amps. Would I benefit swapping the Mc for a Legacy Audio i·V2 Dual Mono Amplifier (Stereo) ? Both amps are probably overkill right?
Rick, the McIntosh 452 like so many of their amps is a great amp and a quiet beast,...delivers music with quiet confidence all the time and when needed can really open up the floodgates as it were in terms of filling a room.

Depending upon point of view a amp with that much capacity and full range potential is overkill however from that same point of view, so is the Legacy i.V2!!! (Ultra by default build spec I believe, one board fully dedicated per channel). Many people forget that all that great power on reserve is not only about playing at scale / high SPLs; it's also about control and ability to handle the dynamics of minute, soft passages.

Either amp is a great match for the top (mids and treble sections) of the AERIS speakers (assuming you have them wiring with internal amps for the bass and sub-bass which is the default. When I had mine, I drove them first with an Edge NL 12.1, then a Maker Audio NL14 and later and until I sold them, an Esoteric A-02; all great amps and definitely full-range beasts capable of driving nearly any speaker full range.

The only advantage you MAY hear if you were to give the i.V2 (Ultra by default) a try is the good of having the same exact sonic family profile, speed, damping factor, etc. on the mids and trebles as you do on the bottom half of the AERIS. To me that is worth investigating however if you can do so in a way that doesn't have you getting rid of the 452 first, that would be the way I'd recommend.

As an aside, McIntosh amps have a long history and reputation for pairing extremely well with all Legacy speakers back to the original Focus and earlier and later models.

I don't remember where you are located however you are welcome to come check out the sonic personality of the i.V4 Ultra. I've had good friends who own Accuphase monoblocks, D'Agostino, Pathos amps and i-amps, Pass Labs X250.8's , Primaluna, Ayon, Lampi, various other tube-amps, here and they have all said they find what the i.V4 Ultra puts out to be very unlike the classic characterizations of Class D amplifications and a big surprise. They also use words like excellent, extremely musical, detailed, organic, etc...

Now, my personal answer is this; for many years I swore I would NEVER have so-called Class D "digital amplification" (ironic as Class D amps are analog just like other topologies) in my system going back 10-15 years.

I've learned to never say "never" in this hobby; today I have nothing but
Class D here, and a whole lot of it at that internal to the VALOR and external.
The reason initially cost and space and keeping a complex setup from being
even bigger and more so.

Today, all that Class D amplification is staying because of how amazing t sounds and the list of much more expensive amps I've heard that don't beat it sonically (to my ears) when the i.V4 Ultra is powered and cabled well. There are quite a few SOTA amps that do but they are in the $50K-$100K categories for 2-ch stereo or 2 monos, and I'd need 4-ch (yikes).

Hope that helps....

Last edited by SCAudiophile; 01-08-2022 at 07:17 PM.
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