I have some significant hearing loss, but still appreciate hi-fi music. Like others with hearing loss, bass is disproportionally important to me. I definitely hear the difference between tight well-controlled bass and muddy, flubby bass. Space is an issue, and for a number of reasons, mono works fine for this location.

Currently, I play lossless or VBR audio from a phone over aptx HD to a small Bluetooth tube pre-amp. This runs into a Dayton Audio APA 150 in bridged 150 watt mode. And finally into a single Klipsch R-820F speaker.

Long story short, for the budget I love this setup. The things I like are that the bass is very good, the rest of the audio is pretty good, and the whole thing has only about a 1.5 square ft. footprint. The entire amp section sits on top of the speaker, leaving room in front for may wallet and glasses, etc.

The only thing I don’t like about it, is the max volume before noticeable distortion is barely loud enough. (I’m often fairly far away from the speaker, so need high volume.) And because of different record levels, most songs are even less loud because I have to set it where it won’t break up severely when the few worst offenders for “too high of record level” come on.

I would like to upgrade to a similar setup, yet with more clean volume. I’m thinking the Klipsch Reference RF-7 III, possibly with the same Bluetooth pre-amp. The bulk of the volume increase will come from the higher sensitivity of the RF-7 IIIs, but I would still like more powerful power amp. Therein lies the rub… I have not been able to find a power amp that would seem to fit the bill (combo of power, quality and size/format).

I would love suggestions a power amp in the ballpark of 250 watts RMS into 8 ohms while < 1% THD… Ideally less than 0.1%. And that would fit nicely on top of that single tower speaker. I don’t have a hard max price, but I’m targeting a ballpark of around $1000 for the amp. Lower is better, but I can go higher if there is a good reason.

I’m also happy to learn, so any other comments if I’m missing things will be appreciated.

Thanks.