Well it's been a hectic last couple of months with the Avalons arriving and breaking them in, moving them backwards and forwards, tweaking rake angle, toe in and so on and so forth. So to make a long story short, I wasn't too sure what to expect with the McIntosh gear that was already in my room. I may possibly be the only Avalon owner in existence with McIntosh components, at least from what I've seen online. Avalons are know to be kind to powerful, fast solid state amplifiers, they're often shown at shows with Spectral and Jeff Rowland to name a couple. As I've been listening, they have sounded good, but honestly not great for what I expected.....I knew there was a chance on purchase that they wouldn't play well with the McIntosh autoformers but I wanted to give it a chance and let my ears adjust. I had always planned on upgrading but wasn't too sure which direction to go until the speakers were in the room playing music. I've always had my eye on a pair of ARC Reference 250 monos, but again, research showed that they may not be a perfect match with the Isis. Based on what I've read about the Avalons, I couldn't help but wonder what they would sound like with a powerful but delicate (some would almost say tubelike) amplifier like a D'agostino Master Audio Systems.
Well the McIntosh 402, while an excellent amplifier, was simply outmatched by the Isis, bass was sloppy and wooly...it didn't run out of steam by any means, but there was something wrong and I knew it pretty much from the getgo, so what to do.
Well, fortune has smiled on me and several weeks ago I was able to start the process of obtaining an excellent deal and decided to go with the stereo S250.......with the levels I listen I just cannot justify a pair of the mono blocks......anyway the S250 is 500 watts/channel in a 4 ohm load so that's plenty! After doing some looking and searching, I got extremely lucky and found a demo Momentum preamp from an authorized dealer.
Finally after sweating the possibility that the shipping company lost the pre (they didn't), it arrived a couple of days ago. I have taken some quick photos, so without further ado, here is what it looks like.
