[yankyfan2]

Hey all, I recently came into a pair of KEF LS50's and I'm looking for some advice for an amp on the cheaper side to drive these bad boys. The two im considering are the PS Audio Sprout100 and the Emotiva TA-100. Am also open to other suggestions, as I'm rather new at dealing with audio hardware. Thanks in advance!

[RDavidson]

The KEFs like power and are one of those cases where one can VERY easily spend far more on amplification (vs the cost of the speakers) to get the sound the KEFs are capable of. You want something that is easily 4 ohm stable. Most small amps can't deliver that. What's your budget?

[yankyfan2]

Probably not much more than the $600 price tag of the Sprout100. I've heard good things about that pairing and whatever I get now will be upgraded when I can, but I just can't shell out $2k-$3k at the moment.

[stonedeaf]

I drove the LS-50's I owned with the Rogue Audio Sphinx for a weekend and frankly thought the combination pretty impressive . LS-50's are very revealing ( very good but will let you know if any of your upstream stuff sounds hard/brittle/suffers from hifrequency nasties. The Rogue integrated got really impressive bass out of the LS-50's without ever making me cringe at any level I wanted to listen at - not a lot more you can ask of a amplifier.

[RDavidson]

The Sphinx is a great recommendation. Plenty of power, but perhaps more importantly it has a "beefy" tone that fills out the lower mid-range and bass without having to crank the volume, as stonedeaf says. That's a big problem I had with the KEFs. I couldn't get them to sound balanced at the low / moderate decibles I tend to listen at (with amps I tried). They sounded thin and lacked the weight I know they are capable of. Then I found single driver, high efficiency, speakers to suit me better...and so the rest is history.

[MiamiAngler]

I bought a recapped Krell KAV 150A for my LS50’s and could not be happier.