Disclaimer: I will have to look at the Magico's as I am unfamiliar with them.
Difficult speaker loads have always sounded best to me using fat, sassy solid-state class-A monoblocks. I have not heard the latest high-power tube amps, however. In a previous life, I never found a tube amp that would do something like B&W 801's or some similar hard-to-drive dynamics justice. With a widely varying load impedance, the tube amps always seemed to struggle in the bass (where the impedance often dipped low) and sometimes the high end, especially with ribbon tweeters since they are usually pretty smooth but very low in impedance. I love the sound of tubes, but driving difficult loads the SS amps always sounded cleaner and offered much better bass. Subjectively, to me.
That said, my preferred (price no object) way to drive a difficult load is with a good tube amp on top and a decent SS amp for the lows. I loved my Maggies bi-amped (actively) with an ARC D-79 for the mid/hi end and Counterpoint SA-220 for the bass panels. The Counterpoint was not the best amp on paper in comparison to the Krell and Levinson I considered, but the hybrid design and MOSFET outputs matched best with the D-79. Since the Maggies roll off slowly, matching amps is important (to me, anyway). I am driving them with a SS amp now and the sound is arguably cleaner but I still recall my "old" sound fondly...
FWIWFM - Don
Difficult speaker loads have always sounded best to me using fat, sassy solid-state class-A monoblocks. I have not heard the latest high-power tube amps, however. In a previous life, I never found a tube amp that would do something like B&W 801's or some similar hard-to-drive dynamics justice. With a widely varying load impedance, the tube amps always seemed to struggle in the bass (where the impedance often dipped low) and sometimes the high end, especially with ribbon tweeters since they are usually pretty smooth but very low in impedance. I love the sound of tubes, but driving difficult loads the SS amps always sounded cleaner and offered much better bass. Subjectively, to me.
That said, my preferred (price no object) way to drive a difficult load is with a good tube amp on top and a decent SS amp for the lows. I loved my Maggies bi-amped (actively) with an ARC D-79 for the mid/hi end and Counterpoint SA-220 for the bass panels. The Counterpoint was not the best amp on paper in comparison to the Krell and Levinson I considered, but the hybrid design and MOSFET outputs matched best with the D-79. Since the Maggies roll off slowly, matching amps is important (to me, anyway). I am driving them with a SS amp now and the sound is arguably cleaner but I still recall my "old" sound fondly...
FWIWFM - Don