Asit (Ji !),
it would be impossible for you to get the amp with "magic" without listening to it yourselves... while there are many options available they better remain options unless you are able to listen to it in your room with your speakers ..so better to explore your Kolkotta options for the time being !
If those do not work out..then you can work out the Prima Luna or Leben options as both of these are known to have the Magic with the power your speakers should be comfortable with. The Redwine Audio Int Amp is also supposed to be a great one for sound. i personaly amd not aware of the other amps discussed and they may be very good too.
I personally will not recommend a Pre=Power combination unless they are proven to have worked well together ! the more the number of components the more "Complicated" things become so an Int Amp should be your first choice for the time being, considering the limited options to do a personal audition ..especially as you are more of a music lover (at a highly evolved stage)than someone who would want to spend time with the technicalities of equipment !
Well, arj, I have tried to understand your point of view. Sure, it is very unlikely that I would end up buying something without having a listen, with or without my speakers.
Unfortunately, there are too few an option in Kolkata. Imagine the limiting case of an audio enthusiast (and/or music lover) living in a place where there is absolutely nothing available. Even today in different forums I find such people (remote places in Europe and in Canada) and ultimately they get themselves some equipments that they ultimately can live with. Of course, to come to a solution, the standard method has to be mended a bit to obtain a result, otherwise there would be a null result.
Now there are two more issues you have touched upon, one is the pre/power and the other is my speakers.
I am pretty sure my speakers are the only pair of Canton Karat 60 speakers in India and they are not small and reasonably heavy (about 35 kilos for the pair). Now if I stick to the view that I will buy an amp only after an audition with my speakers then I got only two options so far, the quad combo (99/909) and the Cayin A-88T. SKS Traders consented to come for home auditions the last time I spoke to them.
But here I like to say something about SKS. The salesperson is quite accommodative, but I did not have a good taste with the little interaction I have had with the owner, he comes across as a snob to me and seemingly would have very little understanding for a customer like me. A few months ago, when I was looking for a CDP, the salesperson in fact promised me that he would get the Marantz 7001 (forgot if it was KI) CDP from the owner's place to the showroom for my audition (the owner apparently upgraded to the 15 S1 CDP). But when I came to the store for that audition, the salesperson told me that he could not get it because the owner apparently did not agree. On the day of the Quad audition he came to the showroom for a short while when our auditions were over. He talked to the salesperson but did not speak to me at all even though he noticed me and there was nobody else in view. He is a very difficult person to talk to, and only once before after about a month's try I had the opportunity of talking to him over the phone on a few cables I bought from them.
So I have no idea whether all of a sudden the owner would instruct the salesperson that there would be no home audition for me. They cater to the needs of people with a lot bigger budget, I know. For example, before I went for the Cayin audition, the salesperson invited me to the owner's home for an audition with Dynaudio Contour series floorstanders, because there was an audition arranged for another guy having the same amp interested in those speakers ( I have written about this before). After thinking hard, I actually did not go, because I did not think I would be perfectly comfortable with the people there and I did not really know how welcome I would be there. Well, what I keep hearing from the salesperson, they get expensive stuff from the respective distributors for people with bigger budget and but I do not ever see such products in store and apparently these customers just buy these gears without auditioning!
In such a case, with basically only one option as SKS traders in Kolkata, I will have to look around for options.
Fortunately my speakers are very efficient. So I am hoping they would go well with most sensible amps. I subscribe to the view that you are mostly hearing your speakers, then source and then amp (provided of course your amp is driving the speakers well) in that order and I have said that many times elsewhere, once also at the beginning of this thread. I fI understood him correctly, I think Cranky also has a similar opinion. However, his tremendous technical knowhow obviously is in a different ballpark.
I may have to take a few educated chances with products from elsewhere. Hopefully I will be able to hear them at least with some other speakers.
With the options here, I will be happy with the Quad 909 the most. I have the feeling that everybody may not have heard this power amp in this forum (sure dinyaar has). I think this is an extremely capable amp with tremendous detail of the midrange (for Indian classical music that is the most important) and very reasonable lows and highs. But the 99 pre may not be the ideal. Our forum member binoymehra has used the 909 with an Axiom passive pre. I wonder whether the Promitheus pre (passive) would work with it. BTW, according to user reports, the Promitheus pre is not a budget product, not even a mid-level, it's a high-end product at a very affordable price.
The Cayin A-88T is the only integrated that is here. So guys, it is good and I can live with it, but can I do better and how?
See arj, this is the problem. I am sorry for the long mail, but it was necessary to explain the finer layers of my thinking with respect to a few ground realities.
