I suggest the Music Hall 15.3 amplifier, which Audio Advisor and Music Direct sell for $549.

It is a very good amplifier with plenty of power and has its own phono stage.

The Cambridge Audio 651A is on special at Audio Advisor for $599 right now, and that would be a good choice.

IMO neither the SR20 or the 6005 would be a good choice for your speakers, which will perform better with a somewhat more powerful amplifier.

tristan74 wrote:

Thanks very much for that advice. I had looked at both the models you suggest, but a bit put off by the fact that I would need an additional pre-amp (phono stage) for the CA 651A, and the Music Hall 15.3 has no balance, treble or bass controls. Are these considered superfluous? Or is the idea that one buys another add-on?

But I'm also a bit puzzled: the CA Azur 651A is rated at 75W per channel, the CA Topaz SR20 at 100W per channel. So how is it I need the power of the 651A to optimally drive the AR3As?

Could you offer your own estimate of power wattage necessary per channel to get good performance from the AR3a's in a 40 m2 room?

I would recommend an amplifier rated for 60 watts per channel or more, because those speakers are not very sensitive.

I am sorry; I was confusing the new SR20 with their older Azur receiver that was only rated at 35 watts per channel. The SR20 should be fine, and it does have a phono stage.

tristan74 wrote:

Thanks again! In the meantime, I have an offer from a very reputable high-end audio repair and sales store here in Switzerland for a NAD C356 BEE, including an added phono stage, all for CHF 700, which is about the same in US Dollars right now. It's an exhibition model that would come with 1 yr guarantee. Would you have a clear preference between this and the CA Topaz SR20?

I have had several NAD amplifiers over the years, including two of the classic NAD 3020 amplifiers and a C326BEE.

I also had a C356BEE. I liked the others, but I did not like the C356BEE and got rid of it. It had a strange sound to it. At first I thought its lack of a coherent bass sound might be due to speakers being out of phase. That was not the case.

I also tried it with a pair of KEF speakers and a pair of PSB Image T6 speakers. No matter what I did, I could never get it to sound quite right.
I finally gave up and sold it. It was an odd problem.

I would recommend the C326BEE or one of the Cambridge amplifiers or receivers.

here's an interesting idea. Go on line and search for "refurbished SAE 2200 power amplifier"
I know that a year ago you could buy one of these for about 200 dollars. It was an excellent amp back in the day. 100 watts per channel. I owned one in the 1970's. The refurbished ones have new state of the art capacators and other circuitry.
They guarantee them to be the equal of any modern power amp.

David Harper wrote:

here's an interesting idea. Go on line and search for "refurbished SAE 2200 power amplifier"
I know that a year ago you could buy one of these for about 200 dollars. It was an excellent amp back in the day. 100 watts per channel. I owned one in the 1970's. The refurbished ones have new state of the art capacators and other circuitry.
They guarantee them to be the equal of any modern power amp.

I'm sorry to disagree, but IMO the sound quality of that amplifier is and was mediocre at best.

I would certainly not recommend it. Besides, he needs an integrated amp, not just a power amplifier.

commsysman wrote:

David Harper wrote:

here's an interesting idea. Go on line and search for "refurbished SAE 2200 power amplifier"
I know that a year ago you could buy one of these for about 200 dollars. It was an excellent amp back in the day. 100 watts per channel. I owned one in the 1970's. The refurbished ones have new state of the art capacators and other circuitry.
They guarantee them to be the equal of any modern power amp.

I'm sorry to disagree, but IMO the sound quality of that amplifier is and was mediocre at best.

I would certainly not recommend it. Besides, he needs an integrated amp, not just a power amplifier.

My understanding is that the rebuilt 2200 available online has upgraded circuitry which fixes the problem the original model had (the problem had nothing to do with sound quality)
And, wrong, the amp had excellent sound quality, in fact, it was widely recognized at the time for it's superior rise time and slew rate, two performance characteristics which were ignored by other amps of that time.

David Harper wrote:

commsysman wrote:

David Harper wrote:

here's an interesting idea. Go on line and search for "refurbished SAE 2200 power amplifier"
I know that a year ago you could buy one of these for about 200 dollars. It was an excellent amp back in the day. 100 watts per channel. I owned one in the 1970's. The refurbished ones have new state of the art capacators and other circuitry.
They guarantee them to be the equal of any modern power amp.

I'm sorry to disagree, but IMO the sound quality of that amplifier is and was mediocre at best.

I would certainly not recommend it. Besides, he needs an integrated amp, not just a power amplifier.

My understanding is that the rebuilt 2200 available online has upgraded circuitry which fixes the problem the original model had (the problem had nothing to do with sound quality)
And, wrong, the amp had excellent sound quality, in fact, it was widely recognized at the time for it's superior rise time and slew rate, two performance characteristics which were ignored by other amps of that time.

ANY engineer who designs ANY amplifier is acutely aware of the rise time and slew rate (which are essentially two different ways of specifying the same thing), since they a very basic characteristic of any amplifier. No one "ignores" them. The manufacturer may not choose to display them prominently in the advertising brochures, but they are well aware of them.

I remember back in the day when the owner of Absolute Audio in Santa Ana, CA said that he chose to not carry that amplifier because its sound quality was not up to their standard as far as he and his staff were concerned. They did consider it and auditioned it extensively.

It is possible that the input coupling capacitors were relatively low-quality ones back them, and they have done a mod and put in better ones. I did that on an old Audire Forte amplifier, and the improvement in sound quality was huge. It does cost $40-$100 or more to do that, however, and many people don't realize what a huge difference it makes in the sound of the amplifier.

The Audire Forte was a good-sounding amp to start with, but with the Infinicaps installed, it gets right up there with the Krell and Audio Research amps. Audio Research uses those caps in their amps, by the way (at considerable expense).

By the way; what was the problem, if it was not sound quality at issue.

The problem was the protection circuit was designed incorrectly. It kept tripping out unnecessarily.
And, wrong again, rise time and slew rate WERE unmentioned and ignored at the time because they were inferior in most amps.
stop making stuff up when you don't know what you're talking about.