[John B]

Recently I had a friend of mine over to listen to my new audio set-up.   He’d heard the previous incarnations of my system and was really interested in why I had chosen to go with all AVA amplification (350EX -mains/Omegastar 240/3 - center/rears).  Previously I had a combination of Plinius & B&K amps.   He had really liked those, though in comparison to his setup, which is all Theta gear, I think he was just being kind

After demo’ing the AVA gear with both stereo and multichannel material he was very excited.   He asked me if AVA was going to come out with any 5-channel amps or perhaps some monoblocks.   Since he has a 7.1 system he said he’d need a 5ch/2ch/mono amp combo.  He also wondered if they made multi-channel tube amps.   I just had to chide him about his interest considering he was talking about some very affordable amplification to replace a mega-expensive Theta Dreadnaught.   His interest was serious though, so I thought I’d post his questions here.  I’ve found that the Omega SS/Fet-valve tube combination to blend surprising well with DVD-A and music DVDs.   I would be very interested though in having tube amplification on all channels.

[Redbeard]

I would also like to see Van Alstine come out with some multi-channel configurations, and I would like to encourage anyone else thinking along these lines to speak up.

The item at the top of my wish list would be a 3 channel preamp.  This would allow me to build a combo multi channel audio/HT setup as follows:

Source:           Denon DVD-2900 Universal Player
Front:              Transcendence-7, FetValve 350EX
Center/Rear:    Omegastar-3, Omegastar 240/3

I might prefer a Transcendence 7-3 instead of the Omegastar-3 preamp, but in any case the 3-channel version could be offered in a striped down configuration (no phono stage, headphone amp, etc.).

Personally, I would prefer this path to a pre/pro for the flexibility it offers, and also since video switching is not a high priority for me (my TV has multiple inputs).