I have been building on this system for three years now and will never consider myself finished. It started with a Denon 1800 receiver and a Energy Take 5 speaker system. I then upgraded to all Paradigm Monitor speaker system. They sounded really good for movies but just lacked something for music only listening. I had Magnepan MMG's in my upstairs office system and one day I switched them into this system and found the sound I was looking for. Never one to be satisfied I then slowly started to upgrade the rest of the upstream gear. All the stuff I have purchased has come from Audiogon members. The tube pre-amp was a big improvement and I have my eye on a Sonic Frontier unit as a upgrade for the future. The Magnepans do very well for home theater use and of course, excell on music. I am very pleased with this system even though the small size of the room is a barrier.
When I used the 1.6's as my main speakers, I used my Classe' Twenty-Five(500wpc into 4ohms) biwired with XLO cable and got really good results. It was a very musical match with the 1.6. Great bass and dynamics along with a seamless transition into the mids and highs. I had originally auditioned the 1.6's with the PSE Studio V monoblocks single-wired with Audio magic cable it sounded tremendous with that setup as well. If you like the warmth of tubes but want to stay with solid state, I would recommend you seek out a BEL 1001 Mk V for audition. Much more apparent power is available than its rated 100wpc into 4 ohms. For a reliable tube amplifier, Quicksilvers are supposed to be near bulletproof. I would love to hear what a pair of V4's would sound like driving a pair of 1.6's!
