For primarily budget reasons, I am using a PreSonus Central Station as a pre amp in my living room speaker system. The PCS has a pretty decent built in dac which I am feeding with a modded Onix cdp via spdif. Due to the fact that my Flying Mole custom amp that had been providing amp duties over this past year has suddenly decided to take the vow of silence, I am in the market for a new sub $1.8K amp and perhaps going balanced if that is doable at that price point.

The PCS has TRS outputs so I was thinking that if I had a pair of TRS to XLR connectors to a "balanced" amp(s) I would have a true balanced speaker system. Am I right or am I blowing smoke? (Leaves self open for a thrashing)

The Firstwatt F1 can be had for less than 1800 if you look around, that's a pretty good speaker and K100 amp.

Hi David,

Thanks for the FW reco but the amp is a whole differerent issue. In my living room the speakers are 88db Infinity's or 90db Fostex 166es back loaded horns with Fostex T90 tweeters, but the speakers have probably fiftyfive to sixty feet of speeker wire between them and the amps so even though I can used to be able to drive the speakers with my late Flying Mole 18 watt amp, I really think I need 50 to 100 watts to get the umph and detailout of them. Ergo, I need more power.......I think. Thanks anyway.

one vote for a Red wine audio sig 30. Little low on power but it has a really beautifull tone. my dad used this battery powered amp on his :

Thanks for the amp suggestions guys, but the first part I need some opinions on is whether the TRS outs of the PreSonus, if connected to XLRs on a balanced amp setup will mean I have a true balanced system.