Cheap Studio Amp

[osterchrisi]

Hi!

I'm planning to buy a cheap end ("kind-of" [in this category I guess]) linear studio amp for my passive monitors. Right now I'm working on an hifi tube amp which sounds super nice but in the end sometimes I want some clean, linear reference to listen to and I don't want it to be headphone monitors anymore.

So I was wondering if anybody has experience with one of these amps:
- Alesis RA-150
- Phonic Max 250
- Samson Servo 120A

Any other suggestions of course more than welcome!
I don't need a lot of power, I don't listen very loud. In the end about 50W - 60W per channel are ok. And it would be great if it wouldn't have a fan too. Price about 100,- to 150,- euros.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences and information with me!

[spm_gl]

We use an Alesis for our passive Dynaudios, and I'm pretty happy with it. Well, with the second one, the first one died after a few weeks. Don't buy the hype on amplifiers, as long as they have decent specs, you can't really go wrong.

[osterchrisi]

Yeah, I mean the specs are ok for what I want to have but what I keep wondering about is that none of those cheap amps provides something like a frequency curve or some kind of diagram with the frequency response; so I assume they are all pretty bad (i.e. cheap)...

What do you mean exactly with

Don't buy the hype on amplifiers

?

[spm_gl]

You won't ever have a problem with the frequency response of a modern solid-state amplifier. All of them are linear in the 20-20k range, most actually up to 50k. Look for signal-to-noise ratio and crosstalk instead. Or simply buy the alesis, it works, it is quiet, and you won't regret it.
What I mean with not buying the hype, is that you can spend tons of money on an amplifier, but spending that kind of money on speakers gets you a much, much larger improvement in audio quality. The difference between a good and an excellent amplifier has become very small these days, but the difference in price is huge.

[osterchrisi]

Cool thanks
I trust you