Back in the day, I had Red Violin Amati Anniversario's and also first gen Wilson Audio Duette's. The Amati's are very forgiving and easy to listen to for extended periods of time with solid state amps; they are orders of magnitude less "analytical" than the same generation Wilsons.. thats for sure..
In my experience, the Wilsons are more demanding to drive and would use the biggest amp on those vs. the Amatis. I used McIntosh solid state amps on both setups, but I had to do lots of tweaks to get the Wilsons to sound the way I wanted to as they were just too harsh. My guess is this is due to the lack of silk dome tweeters on the Wilsons of that era, but careful use of tubes (on the pre-amp) and cabling can negate this.
|