Hi Lizard King,

The best I can offer is my experiences using tube buffers with my 990. I am pleased with the tube buffers to give me that extra warmth, bass and detail (without the digital edginess) I wanted vs. without. You can see via my signature that I even use a Jolida tube phono preamp. I always liked the idea of being able to change out the tubes so that I can "tailor" the sound of my system to my liking. You can do the same with the VTL amps. The VTLs should have enough power to drive your speakers. Hope this helps you.