Diablo Utopia & D120

[Jean-Marie]

[...]
But hearing this about the Phantoms I really need to give them a listen! 

Concerning the question if a D120 is enough to drive the Diablos, I can only speak of my own experience. I started with a D200 before moving to a D400. The D200 was very good but moving to D400 gave the sound some extra oomph, this is pretty obvious at lower volumes where I thought the D200 struggled some with the Diablos (loosing some soundstage and punch). Can´t say if this was due to the extra power or just going mono.Though this is at very critical listening , the D200 makes an excellent work with the Diablos. Sorry, don´t know if that helped you  

Johan

Johan,

Yes hearing them oneself is really the only way to make oneself an opinion that really matters.

Concerning the move from the D200 to the D400, I honestly think that it comes much more from the intrinsic qualities of the dual Mono rather than the 3 dB increase in power. This tend to be proven by the fact that you are experiencing such improvement even at lower volumes where any difference cannot come from voltage or current capability (power) but all the rest.

My two cents,
Jean-Marie

PS: I should have told upfront that I'm listening primarily to classical music where it is quite easy to get an absolute reference: Go regularly to concerts which do not have any microphone nor amplification and you get a pretty good idea of how each instrument is supposed to be sounding. This is more difficult to get with other genres which are always amplified, in which case it is harder to get an indisputable reference of how it was sounding then being mixed.