I think you will find the Symphonic Line amp to be the better one.
As far as I know, that is the one with the most power here, of those 4.
Correct. But that's the one I cannot audition before buying, and no money-back guarantee. But it is also the one that seems most interesting.
You got the behringer so you then can taylor that sound pretty much any way you wan't it.
The more i adjust the more power i would need.
But i dont have much to boost the bass, so i would think in 25% the amount of greater power needed.
The problem as I see is that you are holding on to that older SF linestage.
It has solidstate rectification,and has been accused of being a bit cool sounding.
AS long as it will actually drive the 10k input characteristics of the RG amp, it should however do a good enough job.
But, Lately that Dehaviland has garnered quite the following, I would Indeed urge you to look at that one for preamp duties.
I could sell the SF and get something else. But no cheap preamp meets my needs. With mullard tube the SF is still good. I eventually plan to have it checkud and some update done, but i'm not sure is a bottleneck.
There's no deHavilland euro distributor that I know. I plan to write to Kara and see what she could do.
But I do need to put a few months inbetween upgrades of 2-3k range.
I didnt mention that I'm currently driving my Linn with the 105wpc Classé cap-100 integrated and it doesnt sound bad at all (i listened to loads of integrateds when i chose it some time ago).
It lacks some air, control and details separation and i would like less grain too. it is only 150W at 4 ohm and in my opinion cannot push the midrange well, nor tame the woofer.
Anything in my short list will be an improvement to it.
While the YBA has about only 100w (measured) it has good control. Watts are not the only mean to measure how well an amplifier will handle some rather difficult load.
Likewise, being the woofer easier to drive than the midrange, the bass tends to bulge, the behringer helped, but it's the power amp duty to control it. This is where the Belles would excel, with its dampening factor curve centered in the <400hz range.
The Linn speakers do like quite a lot of power, I'm guessing that you don't use the "aktiv" boards or anything, any amp must sort
of have at least a good dose of power on tap.
Long story, in short: linn amplification sucks, the aktiv tunebox push the bass even more and is hard to find and expensive to bi/triamp. They just need a generous amount of power (at my listening levels i can assume 200W*+ at 4 ohms, the yba-2 measured 180 iirc)
I have also been suggested by various people to replace the speakers. I have a forced room positioning and i could go only with slim towers possibly without bass reflex. Nothing good under 5-10k (euros) and even in that pricerange, I havent heard yet something that clearly sounds better than my linns, even with all their defects.
You are quite fortunate to be able to test this many amps, before making a choice, this certainly isn't always the case
for many 'philes!!
It takes a lot of time and effort to manage this. i did buy some stuff without listening. But not amplification, it is too critical for my system.
I am fortunate enough to live in the biggest town of northern italy and there are quite many distributors, retailers and audiophiles where to listen gear. But nothing compares to listen in your own system and room.
I auditionned the Norma without the DAC and the Behringer in my system, it was an improvement (especially voices, among the best, without considering price) but not big. Otherwise i would have probably decided to go with it.
The guy will let me borrow the unit again for further evaluation, and this time i want to have at least another amp to A/B.
