Which System ???

[rollo]

  Over the years I have owned or listened to many different combos of gear and speaker. 300B mono blocks with single driver speakers. Line Array with SET or SS mono blocks. Planars with tubes and high power SS amps. Had Maggies, Pipedream, Rethm, GTA, Mirage M3si, Alon, Snell, Heco Hoern, Fritz. Now Qln Prestige one with Rythmic Subs.
  Been thinking what was my favorite ?? Leaning with SET amp either 211 or 300B. But the line arrays with those Amps were amazing as well. 
   All above sounded really good. Choosing the best seems moot now. However there will be one characteristic above ALL ELSE that makes the decision. WHAT is that for you ??

charles

[P.I.]

High sensitivity speakers (93dB/1w/1m)

Very quiet tube amps

NOS DAC

These things just make for enjoyment.  Dynamics are more convincing.

[BobM]

I'm just the opposite

Low efficiency Apogee ribbon panels
High current High powered amp
Tubes in the pre sections
Vinyl or good digital

It's amazing how good musical sounds can be had in a variety of configurations.

[Nick B]

I have never owned efficient speakers, OB, planars... Therefore have never owned fleawatt amps either. Would like to try someday, but would rather complete what I'm working on now.

I enjoyed my Border Patrol SEi dac. The Holo Cyan2 dac is excellent and a bargain
for the price. I plan on adding HQ Player and try DSD 256. That's all that my Mac desktop can handle. I've heard many express preferences as to types of dacs and comments about HQPlayer. The only way to find out is to try it.

[steve]

  Over the years I have owned or listened to many different combos of gear and speaker. 300B mono blocks with single driver speakers. Line Array with SET or SS mono blocks. Planars with tubes and high power SS amps. Had Maggies, Pipedream, Rethm, GTA, Mirage M3si, Alon, Snell, Heco Hoern, Fritz. Now Qln Prestige one with Rythmic Subs.
  Been thinking what was my favorite ?? Leaning with SET amp either 211 or 300B. But the line arrays with those Amps were amazing as well. 
   All above sounded really good. Choosing the best seems moot now. However there will be one characteristic above ALL ELSE that makes the decision. WHAT is that for you ??

charles

For me, it is the accurate/natural reproduction of what was recorded. No faking, manipulation.
That means:

1. Accurate/natural reproduction of instruments/voices. I don't want fake, distorted music,
     fake sound stage, or lack thereof, excellent dynamics etc. I want that violin, clarinet, sax to
     sound real.

2. Complete transparency. For instance, bypassing a 47uf capacitor with 12pf alters the high frequency
     musical signal voltage by approximately 1 part in 4 million. Using 20log equations for voltage change,
     that is approximately -132db from the fundamental. As such, product specs mean so little.
     Virtually no products even come close to such ideal conditions, though some come close through
     diligence as we see in this string and other places.

3. Accurate sound stage, within the parameters of my home venue, but not negatively affecting
     natural sounding instruments/voices. I could use a larger, wider room.

Cheers

steve

[rollo]

  Over the years I have owned or listened to many different combos of gear and speaker. 300B mono blocks with single driver speakers. Line Array with SET or SS mono blocks. Planars with tubes and high power SS amps. Had Maggies, Pipedream, Rethm, GTA, Mirage M3si, Alon, Snell, Heco Hoern, Fritz. Now Qln Prestige one with Rythmic Subs.
  Been thinking what was my favorite ?? Leaning with SET amp either 211 or 300B. But the line arrays with those Amps were amazing as well. 
   All above sounded really good. Choosing the best seems moot now. However there will be one characteristic above ALL ELSE that makes the decision. WHAT is that for you ??

charles

For me, it is the accurate/natural reproduction of what was recorded. No faking, manipulation.
That means:

1. Accurate/natural reproduction of instruments/voices. I don't want fake, distorted music,
     fake sound stage, or lack thereof, excellent dynamics etc. I want that violin, clarinet, sax to
     sound real.

2. Complete transparency. For instance, bypassing a 47uf capacitor with 12pf alters the high frequency
     musical signal voltage by approximately 1 part in 4 million. Using 20log equations for voltage change,
     that is approximately -132db from the fundamental. As such, product specs mean so little.
     Virtually no products even come close to such ideal conditions, though some come close through
     diligence as we see in this string and other places.

3. Accurate sound stage, within the parameters of my home venue, but not negatively affecting
     natural sounding instruments/voices. I could use a larger, wider room.

Cheers

steve

   Me as well Steve. Sometimes that clarity can be dry or lean. If not "The holy grail".

charles

[steve]

  Over the years I have owned or listened to many different combos of gear and speaker. 300B mono blocks with single driver speakers. Line Array with SET or SS mono blocks. Planars with tubes and high power SS amps. Had Maggies, Pipedream, Rethm, GTA, Mirage M3si, Alon, Snell, Heco Hoern, Fritz. Now Qln Prestige one with Rythmic Subs.
  Been thinking what was my favorite ?? Leaning with SET amp either 211 or 300B. But the line arrays with those Amps were amazing as well. 
   All above sounded really good. Choosing the best seems moot now. However there will be one characteristic above ALL ELSE that makes the decision. WHAT is that for you ??

charles

For me, it is the accurate/natural reproduction of what was recorded. No faking, manipulation.
That means:

1. Accurate/natural reproduction of instruments/voices. I don't want fake, distorted music,
     fake sound stage, or lack thereof, excellent dynamics etc. I want that violin, clarinet, sax to
     sound real.

2. Complete transparency. For instance, bypassing a 47uf capacitor with 12pf alters the high frequency
     musical signal voltage by approximately 1 part in 4 million. Using 20log equations for voltage change,
     that is approximately -132db from the fundamental. As such, product specs mean so little.
     Virtually no products even come close to such ideal conditions, though some come close through
     diligence as we see in this string and other places.

3. Accurate sound stage, within the parameters of my home venue, but not negatively affecting
     natural sounding instruments/voices. I could use a larger, wider room.

Cheers

steve

   Me as well Steve. Sometimes that clarity can be dry or lean. If not "The holy grail".

charles

I agree Charles, some recording selections are quite lean or bloated. With orchestras, I find that
certain venues follow a pattern, of course because they use the same components over time.

I tend to find that home recordings, minimalist recordings, tend to sound better than over complicated
ones, although not in stone. Some groups want their recording to be have special effects, which of course
involves more complications.

In both cases, I find that recording components still do not use all polypropylene capacitors for maximum
naturalness and minimal masking. Of course such capacitors make components exceptionally physically
large.

I would have loved to design/build a recording studio using such capacitors and primarily, of course,
vacuum tubes. But it would take lots of money, and some time matching up the best microphone's
frequency response to the recording components. And of course developing those to record.
Not enough time nor money for such an attempt.

Cheers

steve

[Nick B]

  Over the years I have owned or listened to many different combos of gear and speaker. 300B mono blocks with single driver speakers. Line Array with SET or SS mono blocks. Planars with tubes and high power SS amps. Had Maggies, Pipedream, Rethm, GTA, Mirage M3si, Alon, Snell, Heco Hoern, Fritz. Now Qln Prestige one with Rythmic Subs.
  Been thinking what was my favorite ?? Leaning with SET amp either 211 or 300B. But the line arrays with those Amps were amazing as well. 
   All above sounded really good. Choosing the best seems moot now. However there will be one characteristic above ALL ELSE that makes the decision. WHAT is that for you ??

charles

For me, it is the accurate/natural reproduction of what was recorded. No faking, manipulation.
That means:

1. Accurate/natural reproduction of instruments/voices. I don't want fake, distorted music,
     fake sound stage, or lack thereof, excellent dynamics etc. I want that violin, clarinet, sax to
     sound real.

2. Complete transparency. For instance, bypassing a 47uf capacitor with 12pf alters the high frequency
     musical signal voltage by approximately 1 part in 4 million. Using 20log equations for voltage change,
     that is approximately -132db from the fundamental. As such, product specs mean so little.
     Virtually no products even come close to such ideal conditions, though some come close through
     diligence as we see in this string and other places.

3. Accurate sound stage, within the parameters of my home venue, but not negatively affecting
     natural sounding instruments/voices. I could use a larger, wider room.

Cheers

steve

   Me as well Steve. Sometimes that clarity can be dry or lean. If not "The holy grail".

charles

I agree Charles, some recording selections are quite lean or bloated. With orchestras, I find that
certain venues follow a pattern, of course because they use the same components over time.

I tend to find that home recordings, minimalist recordings, tend to sound better than over complicated
ones, although not in stone. Some groups want their recording to be have special effects, which of course
involves more complications.

In both cases, I find that recording components still do not use all polypropylene capacitors for maximum
naturalness and minimal masking. Of course such capacitors make components exceptionally physically
large.

I would have loved to design/build a recording studio using such capacitors and primarily, of course,
vacuum tubes. But it would take lots of money, and some time matching up the best microphone's
frequency response to the recording components. And of course developing those to record.
Not enough time nor money for such an attempt.

Cheers

steve

I believe back in the day Dave designed a few recording studios. If he saes this, maybe he'll comment. I am amazed how good some of the 50-60+ year old recordings are that I get from Roon. Am very curious what mics they used, what equipment etc.

Nick

[steve]

  Over the years I have owned or listened to many different combos of gear and speaker. 300B mono blocks with single driver speakers. Line Array with SET or SS mono blocks. Planars with tubes and high power SS amps. Had Maggies, Pipedream, Rethm, GTA, Mirage M3si, Alon, Snell, Heco Hoern, Fritz. Now Qln Prestige one with Rythmic Subs.
  Been thinking what was my favorite ?? Leaning with SET amp either 211 or 300B. But the line arrays with those Amps were amazing as well. 
   All above sounded really good. Choosing the best seems moot now. However there will be one characteristic above ALL ELSE that makes the decision. WHAT is that for you ??

charles

For me, it is the accurate/natural reproduction of what was recorded. No faking, manipulation.
That means:

1. Accurate/natural reproduction of instruments/voices. I don't want fake, distorted music,
     fake sound stage, or lack thereof, excellent dynamics etc. I want that violin, clarinet, sax to
     sound real.

2. Complete transparency. For instance, bypassing a 47uf capacitor with 12pf alters the high frequency
     musical signal voltage by approximately 1 part in 4 million. Using 20log equations for voltage change,
     that is approximately -132db from the fundamental. As such, product specs mean so little.
     Virtually no products even come close to such ideal conditions, though some come close through
     diligence as we see in this string and other places.

3. Accurate sound stage, within the parameters of my home venue, but not negatively affecting
     natural sounding instruments/voices. I could use a larger, wider room.

Cheers

steve

   Me as well Steve. Sometimes that clarity can be dry or lean. If not "The holy grail".

charles

I agree Charles, some recording selections are quite lean or bloated. With orchestras, I find that
certain venues follow a pattern, of course because they use the same components over time.

I tend to find that home recordings, minimalist recordings, tend to sound better than over complicated
ones, although not in stone. Some groups want their recording to be have special effects, which of course
involves more complications.

In both cases, I find that recording components still do not use all polypropylene capacitors for maximum
naturalness and minimal masking. Of course such capacitors make components exceptionally physically
large.

I would have loved to design/build a recording studio using such capacitors and primarily, of course,
vacuum tubes. But it would take lots of money, and some time matching up the best microphone's
frequency response to the recording components. And of course developing those to record.
Not enough time nor money for such an attempt.

Cheers

steve

I believe back in the day Dave designed a few recording studios. If he saes this, maybe he'll comment. I am amazed how good some of the 50-60+ year old recordings are that I get from Roon. Am very curious what mics they used, what equipment etc.

Nick

The U47 was quite famous for its quality, using a tube, not ss. I would use my own tube electronic designs,
and it would be totally pure, no manipulation except where absolutely necessary, for band requirements.
I would use my own vacuum tube playback system to verify and/or make any touch ups to the design.

The actual manufacturer's electronics back in the 50s/60s were simply ok, some problems in that
time as well.

1. They used electrolytic capacitors in the power supply decoupling.

2. The coupling capacitors were way too small in ufd. Global negative feedback helped some, but
not to the extremely high standards I would need. Unfortunately, analog to digital converters
uses ss and electrolytics as well. Hopefully, I would be able to work around some of the problems.

3. Closer to today, I visited a recording manufacturer of ss designs years ago (hopefully has upgraded
their design and parts as they used Radio Shack parts quality) and they charged 100 grand because
it was so complicated to put together. As I mentioned, the manufacturer's parts quality was extremely
low. I saw little of optimum manufacturer's engineering standards that were followed.

Granted today, a company who manufacturers circuits can somewhat simplify as one only needs
to produce a CD/DVD etc, not amplifier/lathe etc. Of course, effects are still wanted by some groups,
but hopefully, one can easily switch around the circuitry, simplifying the overall and using some
high quality parts, and not relays.

Cheers

steve