Heard a pair of the XA160.8's in a friend's system and was very impressed.
He's driving Revel Ultima Salons and front end is a Bricasti M1 with a Gryphon Pandora pre.
The system sounded positively glorious and the step up from the XA100.5's was very substantial, particularly at frequency extremes. Bass is definitely on the warm side of neutral but there's better control and transient impact compared with the old model.
I don't think you need a tube pre with these amps because they're so inherently tube-like as it is.
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