Bunch O Amps

[rollo]

I love to see two Music Reference owners telling me to go back to tubes... Glad you are both so happy guys! Henry turned me on to MR, and I mentioned it to Rob, and so it goes!!! The tubers are grinning! 

Talk about crazy? I drove 520 miles today to buy a pair of GR/Rythmik servo subs. Got a great deal (not counting travel) and met a heck of a nice, well seasoned audiophile, Larry. Holy shit, talk about a nice system. ASL Hurricanes Maggies, exotic tube preamp, I don't remember all the details. He's getting some Merlins this weekend. I wanted to stay all day to chat.  He further fanned my tube embers. He has owned just about every amp  and speaker out there, every flavor of class D including W4S, NuForce, spectron, but he always come back to big tube amps and his beloved Sound Labs speakers. He used to be a professional high end speaker designer, I forget which brand. The subs are built beautifully. Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing these subs and seeing if the bass really is "the best I've ever heard" which his what everybody is saying about these, even Larry. He said he compared it directly to SoundLabs bass and liked them both in different ways. That's saying something.

So two more plate amps add to the amp pile. The subs are destined for Carl's system, but they're MINE for now...    I have some small Feastrex bookshelves ready to sit on top.
Still thinking about yesterday's Shostakovich 5the Symphony with the Spectron. Man that was fun.

Richadoo the Music Reference is a classic tube design. Loverly tone great bass and a natural sweet top end. A true classic. Beg, borrow, steal to get a home audition. IMO it will synergies with your Ushers quite well.
    Not a fan of Ice amps. Cool and clinical. However have not heard them all to make a final judgement. What they do for subs is another story a good one.  focused bass. What does bother me though is " an upgrade or mod is coming" IMO get it right BEFORE it goes to market.  Did you say $7500 for that ? Did you look inside and see $7500 worth of parts ? For that money I would find my dream amp USED. Joule Electra Marquis. Probably the last amp I would buy. But that's me. A bit steep in price new. Out of touch really.
    My reference amps [ in the house ] are an AR Classic 60, AR DR250 servo Mk2, Consonance Cyber 211s mono blocks and last but not least a modified Adcom for my SS fix. Use both passive[ Promitheus dual mono TVC modified by Mapleshade ] and active preamp [ Loesch & Weisner ]. Main speakers are Pipedreams with Maggie 3As [ 3.6 ribbons ] and a lonlely pair of Omegas.
   Now all respected amps right. OK so why then does one sound better than the other with different speakers. Say AR sounds great with the Maggie's but not the Pipedreams ? Synergy that's what. There is NO BEST amp IMO. Its what amp and speaker combo one is using. We have all experienced " how come it sounds better in my system " Just like ICs, speaker cables, digital cables etc.
   When I'm looking for an amp I contact the speaker Manf. to try to find out what amp was used in voicing the speaker or what amp the designer uses at home. Then I listen in my home to find out if it works for me. Worked with the Maggies and AR. Consonance and the Pipes and Omegas.
    BTW the Music Ref amp has a wonderful synergy with the Audible Illusions 3a Preamp and Proac speakers. Just heaven.
    IMO we might consider chasing synergy of components instead of the "Amp" of the week. Oh and if you can find a JC Morrison design used BUY IT ! My take anyway.



charles


    The amp that has caught my eye lately is the Nightshade line. Handmade, simple and NOT overpriced.  Nightshade also offers custom made amps using Trannies you may have from older gear. For example an old Fisher intergrated I'm thinking of having an amp and pre made from. We shall see.
   

[richidoo]

My notifications stopped.... Sorry slow response..

Anyway - Henry has brouhgt his RM9 over here recently. Everything you said rollo. Surprisingly tight bass, lots of balls. Not quite as graceful and 3D as the Snappers. Looking forward to hearing RM200 at some point. It has FET inputs, I think?  Great value there.

$7500 list is for the Spectron Musician 3, which is not an ICE amp. It is discreet circuit analog switching amp with digital feedback after the output filter. Another couple hours with it this morning, geez, it's very nice. Incredible. Best I've heard on these speakers. My previous reservations have been associated with source signal quality. With a good recording it is wicked good. Take some getting used to the big change in performance.

I agree there is no best amp. Just what's best for the system, budget and music taste at that moment, and it can change as taste and system tuning ability improve with experience. Taste evolution makes the best amp's price go up, audiophile skill makes it go down because he can create more art with less money, and has less need for self validation with brand/appearance.

[_Scotty_]

I'll play the devils advocate here and say there is a best amp. I don't know who makes it,but it will be solid state and it will behave like a straight wire with gain. If the designer strives for High Fidelity, the amp will not be voiced in any fashion. It will tell the truth and if there are faults with how the system sounds then at least you can look elsewhere for the source of the problem.
For my money a lot of problems encountered in assembling a system can be laid at the foot of designers who voice their products. It's kind of difficult to proceed in a straight line to a goal when each piece of gear zigs or zags in opposite directions. This opens the door to to complete mismatches and dissatisfaction with the sound of your system. From where I sit the act of assembling a sound system looks like a complete crapshoot with no way to reliably predict the outcome.
Scotty

[Carlman]

From where I sit the act of assembling a sound system looks like a complete crapshoot with no way to reliably predict the outcome.
Scotty

I came to the same conclusion about gear.  That was what pushed me to build a dedicated room with lots of thought and design put into the acoustics. Room acoustics is something I can control with actual measurements.. and I can 'voice' it to my ears.  Then everything I play in that room will sound as good as I can make it sound.  At least then I have 1 constant.

Often times you're listening to the interactions of your room with gear.  How the gear was voiced may play favorably for you, it may not.  It just gets more and more complicated.  So it is somewhat of a crapshoot... but at the same time there are levels of crap... A cheap receiver won't sound as good as an expensive amp/preamp.  As much as some people have tried to make me believe.  However, I'd rather have a cheap receiver in a really great room than a ton of nice gear in a really bad room.  I've had both!

-C

[richidoo]

It will tell the truth and if there are faults with how the system sounds then at least you can look elsewhere for the source of the problem.

I never believed I would believe this, but this week I learned that it's possible to have too much resolution, too straight a wire. Too much truth. I have replaced everything since my first system with extremely high resolution low distortion components. I got a new DAC today (Digital Link3 Cullen mods, from Black Sands) to remove the last "problem" - more on that later, but it is another super component like the other stuff in this system now, all of it together is too much resolution. The music is too intense, I feel the midrange harmonies vibrating inside my head. I need some veils. Anyone who says there's not enough resolution on CD just needs to upgrade their system. But not too much!

miklorsmith was right, it is possible to have too much resolution. OK Mike? Now come on back!   

I also learned today that it is possible to enjoy a lower resolution / higher distortion system even more than the opposite, state of the art ultra resolution system. People love distortion! It's like ketchup.

[_Scotty_]

richidoo,How much do small acoustic jazz ensembles that are well recorded sound like real life. Also how real do recordings of symphony orchestras sound that have had purest miking techniques used in their production. What I am asking in a round about way is are you looking for a system that will strongly remind you of the real thing when the recording is done well and do you think the current "Hi-Res"setup does this
or are you looking for something else from reproduced music? If your system distortion is actually pretty low
you may be running into production problems in your recordings. It is also possible that the Spectron may have weaknesses that are offsetting its strengths. I would not assume that the problem lies in too much resolution,the too much of a good thing problem might be solved with a change to different ICs or speaker wire. If Carlmans run of Reality Cable speaker wires is long enough you might swap them into the system, I had excellent results using them with a 120watt/8ohms Tripath based amp.
Good luck in your search for right mix of equipment.
Scotty

[richidoo]

Thanks Scotty. You bring up some good points. There should not be a concern with too much resolution. That makes sense, because real life resolution is only limited by the attention focus of the brain and we have no problem with reality. Well, most of us...   

What really matters is how it's presented, is there a distortion that makes the heightened resolution annoying? I had not done any tweaking on first day with DAC, just plugged it up and listened. And blabbed my face on the internet.  haha  Lots of resolution but feels like too much.  Today I had more time to think and be inspired to try some things. First, tried different upsample settings on the DAC. Not much difference there, which is a  good sign that 96 and 192 settings sound the same. If they sounded different, one would be right, and the other less right - both less right, or whatever.... more nervosa. Usually those upsample option settings sound like crap, just native resolution sounds best, but on this dac it doesn't make much difference, so far. I thought about the cheap Taiwan $5 crossover caps in the speakers high and mid high passes. They are on the docket anyway, but requires speaker downtime which I have been hesitant to do. Anyway, then I wondered about that little B1 buffer preamp that I built myself, with about $100 parts sitting between DAC and amp. With my other DAC it had less of an effect. I was worried to remove the VC from a new source that I don't trust yet, and the almighty Spectron which could crack my speakers open in an instant. But I also got the new Cullen Sonos player from Black Sands, which upsamples the Sonos redbook stream to to 24 bit/96kHz output, allowing much more digital volume control before losing bits. So I turned it down and connected the DAC straight into Spectron, losing a set of Grover silver ribbon ICs too. Ahhhhhhhhh... that's much better. The B1 is a great pre, don't get me wrong, but it is what it is, a nice sweet diy volume control for $100 of normal quality parts. The tizzies I was hearing on violins and brass buzz disappeared, making the high freq resolution a lot easier to take, but the ultra clear powerful highs remain. I was worried that the dreaded oversampling tinsel was showing, but no. The bass also tightened up considerably. I played the Minnesota Beethoven 9th Symphony at almost full volume, all the way through, loved every minute with my 6yo Beethoven freak daughter on my lap. Now we're getting somewhere.  I do have some new wires (Black Sands prototype SIGNAL WIRES ) burning in now so there's always options there too, but I've always been quite impressed with the effect of JPS wires in the few systems I've heard, but they are also pretty dang revealling.

Big step forward today. MUCH farther down the rabbit hole. I don't know if you tube guys can save me now. I might have to fly through this wormhole to the other side.

With AC down, maybe there are some guys dropping in who have heard Spectron and can share their experiences? Zybar said he didn't really dig it. I have to admit, it was weird at first for me too. But I think the potential is incredible given the normal tweeking and tuning the system for such a big change as a new power amp. I'd like to hear more opinions and experiences. Reliability?
Thanks
Rich

[zybar]

I love to see two Music Reference owners telling me to go back to tubes... Glad you are both so happy guys! Henry turned me on to MR, and I mentioned it to Rob, and so it goes!!! The tubers are grinning! 

Talk about crazy? I drove 520 miles today to buy a pair of GR/Rythmik servo subs. Got a great deal (not counting travel) and met a heck of a nice, well seasoned audiophile, Larry. Holy shit, talk about a nice system. ASL Hurricanes Maggies, exotic tube preamp, I don't remember all the details. He's getting some Merlins this weekend. I wanted to stay all day to chat.  He further fanned my tube embers. He has owned just about every amp  and speaker out there, every flavor of class D including W4S, NuForce, spectron, but he always come back to big tube amps and his beloved Sound Labs speakers. He used to be a professional high end speaker designer, I forget which brand. The subs are built beautifully. Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing these subs and seeing if the bass really is "the best I've ever heard" which his what everybody is saying about these, even Larry. He said he compared it directly to SoundLabs bass and liked them both in different ways. That's saying something.

So two more plate amps add to the amp pile. The subs are destined for Carl's system, but they're MINE for now...    I have some small Feastrex bookshelves ready to sit on top.
Still thinking about yesterday's Shostakovich 5th Symphony with the Spectron. Man that was fun.

Let us know what you think of the subs.

I am on the fence about building a pair with two drivers per sub and could use a little nudge to fully commit.

George

[zybar]

Thanks Scotty. You bring up some good points. There should not be a concern with too much resolution. That makes sense, because real life resolution is only limited by the attention focus of the brain and we have no problem with reality. Well, most of us...   

What really matters is how it's presented, is there a distortion that makes the heightened resolution annoying? I had not done any tweaking on first day with DAC, just plugged it up and listened. And blabbed my face on the internet.  haha  Lots of resolution but feels like too much.  Today I had more time to think and be inspired to try some things. First, tried different upsample settings on the DAC. Not much difference there, which is a  good sign that 96 and 192 settings sound the same. If they sounded different, one would be right, and the other less right - both less right, or whatever.... more nervosa. Usually those upsample option settings sound like crap, just native resolution sounds best, but on this dac it doesn't make much difference, so far. I thought about the cheap Taiwan $5 crossover caps in the speakers high and mid high passes. They are on the docket anyway, but requires speaker downtime which I have been hesitant to do. Anyway, then I wondered about that little B1 buffer preamp that I built myself, with about $100 parts sitting between DAC and amp. With my other DAC it had less of an effect. I was worried to remove the VC from a new source that I don't trust yet, and the almighty Spectron which could crack my speakers open in an instant. But I also got the new Cullen Sonos player from Black Sands, which upsamples the Sonos redbook stream to to 24 bit/96kHz output, allowing much more digital volume control before losing bits. So I turned it down and connected the DAC straight into Spectron, losing a set of Grover silver ribbon ICs too. Ahhhhhhhhh... that's much better. The B1 is a great pre, don't get me wrong, but it is what it is, a nice sweet diy volume control for $100 of normal quality parts. The tizzies I was hearing on violins and brass buzz disappeared, making the high freq resolution a lot easier to take, but the ultra clear powerful highs remain. I was worried that the dreaded oversampling tinsel was showing, but no. The bass also tightened up considerably. I played the Minnesota Beethoven 9th Symphony at almost full volume, all the way through, loved every minute with my 6yo Beethoven freak daughter on my lap. Now we're getting somewhere.  I do have some new wires (Black Sands prototype SIGNAL WIRES ) burning in now so there's always options there too, but I've always been quite impressed with the effect of JPS wires in the few systems I've heard, but they are also pretty dang revealling.

Big step forward today. MUCH farther down the rabbit hole. I don't know if you tube guys can save me now. I might have to fly through this wormhole to the other side.

With AC down, maybe there are some guys dropping in who have heard Spectron and can share their experiences? Zybar said he didn't really dig it. I have to admit, it was weird at first for me too. But I think the potential is incredible given the normal tweeking and tuning the system for such a big change as a new power amp. I'd like to hear more opinions and experiences. Reliability?
Thanks
Rich

Reliability...certainly a major factor in my mind.

Read the boards and you can see that Spectron has had more than its fair share of quality control issues.

Literally almost all the people I know very well that own or owned a Spectron amp (6-8 people) had technical problems with their amps.  With that small sample size you always want to be careful drawing conclusions, but it is still not good.

George

[Carlman]

I love to see two Music Reference owners telling me to go back to tubes... Glad you are both so happy guys! Henry turned me on to MR, and I mentioned it to Rob, and so it goes!!! The tubers are grinning! 

Talk about crazy? I drove 520 miles today to buy a pair of GR/Rythmik servo subs. Got a great deal (not counting travel) and met a heck of a nice, well seasoned audiophile, Larry. Holy shit, talk about a nice system. ASL Hurricanes Maggies, exotic tube preamp, I don't remember all the details. He's getting some Merlins this weekend. I wanted to stay all day to chat.  He further fanned my tube embers. He has owned just about every amp  and speaker out there, every flavor of class D including W4S, NuForce, spectron, but he always come back to big tube amps and his beloved Sound Labs speakers. He used to be a professional high end speaker designer, I forget which brand. The subs are built beautifully. Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing these subs and seeing if the bass really is "the best I've ever heard" which his what everybody is saying about these, even Larry. He said he compared it directly to SoundLabs bass and liked them both in different ways. That's saying something.

So two more plate amps add to the amp pile. The subs are destined for Carl's system, but they're MINE for now...    I have some small Feastrex bookshelves ready to sit on top.
Still thinking about yesterday's Shostakovich 5th Symphony with the Spectron. Man that was fun.

Let us know what you think of the subs.

I am on the fence about building a pair with two drivers per sub and could use a little nudge to fully commit.

George

George, I'm picking up the subs from Rich this afternoon to try in my system.. Once I get them dialed in, I'll be glad to report on how the gel as well.
-C

[Black Sand Cable]

Reliability...certainly a major factor in my mind.

Read the boards and you can see that Spectron has had more than its fair share of quality control issues.

Literally almost all the people I know very well that own or owned a Spectron amp (6-8 people) had technical problems with their amps.  With that small sample size you always want to be careful drawing conclusions, but it is still not good.

George

Hey George,

I have had a few people say this about Spectron amps and I have had a completely different experience. I have been the Canadian Distributor for over a year now and as a result have had a few Spectron amps go through my hands and to date, I have yet to have one require service. I have also gotten to know a few owners who purchased Spectron prior to my involvement and they have experienced no problems.

There may have been problems in the past that I'm not aware of, but over the last 12 or so months, the failure rate for me is zero.

[zybar]

Reliability...certainly a major factor in my mind.

Read the boards and you can see that Spectron has had more than its fair share of quality control issues.

Literally almost all the people I know very well that own or owned a Spectron amp (6-8 people) had technical problems with their amps.  With that small sample size you always want to be careful drawing conclusions, but it is still not good.

George

Hey George,

I have had a few people say this about Spectron amps and I have had a completely different experience. I have been the Canadian Distributor for over a year now and as a result have had a few Spectron amps go through my hands and to date, I have yet to have one require service. I have also gotten to know a few owners who purchased Spectron prior to my involvement and they have experienced no problems.

There may have been problems in the past that I'm not aware of, but over the last 12 or so months, the failure rate for me is zero.

Glad to hear that John.

That's why I wanted to stress the small sample size.

That being said, my friends (including a former dealer) still had their issues and in all cases they had to have their amp go back to Spectron.  I will say that in each case Spectron stood behind their product and resolved the issue.

George

[richidoo]

Thanks George and John

[richidoo]

After another week of listening, I am getting to like this Spectron. The treble is intense, but it's correct. The biggest problem which is a biggun is the quality of recordings. Older recordings remastered to CD by fucking morons are tough to take. But modern recordings are sublime. I have a lot of acoustic treatment going up in the next couple weeks, so that will take down the treble some. Plus upgrading the crossover wire and caps will help with treble refinement too.  But from 5k down, this amp is awesome! What I love most about  it is the ability to sort out and present ultra complicated passages calmly and cleanly at loud volumes. No sense of strain at all. And I don't have to concentrate to hear or comprehend what is going on. New DAC and maybe the amp too are continuing to break in, it seems to be getting smoother. Switching back to smaller amps the difference is notable.   I let the GG preamp warm up for a while before connecting it to Spectron to avoid the little squeal they made together last time, confirmed GG offset was <1mV each channel  It did as expected, rolled down the treble intensity, added a surprisingly thin veil, and some hiss. It's a good match, but I know there are tube pres that could do even better. But after an hour of that, I pulled out the preamp and preferred the direct connection overall.  It's definitely a mood thing. If I'm up to it, the intensity doesn't bother me, but if I'm tired, it is annoying. I need a switchable 6sn7 buffer stage in an otherwise passive VC.   Thanks to Shane for the ongoing offline advice.

[rollo]

Cool. Hey the only person it has to sound good for is YOU. I stand corrected that the Spectron iwas an Ice amp. Anyway for me it is the upper frequencies that must be correct for my ears. I can live with other issues but the top is the deciding factor for me. Thin, bright, overdetailed, crisp, no decay, fatiguing and I'm outta there. Must have weight, decay, and be three dimensional like floating in air.
    Besides in a live event I'm not sitting with the musicians. A mid hall presentation for me. I have noticed that my buddies who like to sit upfront prefer a different sound than me. Interesting actually, maybe a thread on the subject may prove interesting. My guess the SS crowd likes front row seats.



charles