That sounds like a reasonable response from HiFi Hut. I heard the Elacs a couple of years ago and to my ears they sounded distinctly 'bright' (ribbon tweeters?). I have transistor and tube based systems and if it suited, you could bring along your speakers and try both amps. Based in Dublin.tipdrinker wrote:Man choosing the amp is hard lol. Just FYI I contacted elac directly to see what they would say. They forwarded my inquiry to hi fi Hut (now they know I didn't buy the speakers from them, damn!) here's what they said...
"We have been contacted by Elac as we are the distributor for their products in Ireland. The e-mail we received explained that you were enquiring as to what sort of amplification they might recommend for use with your 403's. As a general rule Elac do not give recommendations for special amps, as there are too many on the market and they have to remain neutral. However, as a retailer for Elac products we are in a position where don't have to remain neutral and we have a couple of options that would work well with the 403's. The first would be the Rega Elex-R at €1278.00. This would be my personal choice, particularly if you're planning on adding a turntable to your system. The second choice would be the Hegel H80 at €1595.00. This would be a better choice if you're looking to connect components digitally as it has a built-in DAC which offers a significant boost in performance for digital devices.
With either of these amplifiers I would recommend using Atlas Loudspeaker Cables. The Equator 2.0 at €8.00 per meter is superb. If you're looking for something better then I'd suggest the Hyper 2.0 at €25.00. Again, this is a personal favourite and is the cable I use in my own system at home. The Elac's can be quite bright and we tend to find that silver loudspeaker cables can make things sound a bit fatiguing. Because of this we'd always recommend using a high quality copper cable, like the Atlas."
T
