As some of you might know, at the moment I have 2 Lampizators dacs at home: the Golden Gate SE with engine 11-p and the Golden Atlantic TRP with Engine 11-p. The Atlantic also has upgraded output capacitors: Duelund Cast Copper 1.0uF bypassed with 0.1uF Jupiter Comet pure silver. Because of its size I am (more or less) forced to sell the Golden Gate. For me, the Golden Gate with engine 11-p, Philips PT14 and Telefunken RGN2004 mesh is absolutely perfect with the music I listen to most. It has a huge soundstage, very detailed but not upfront. Great imaging, air, bass definition, and always fully in control no matter how frantic the music gets. It just fits large orchestral music and opera extremely well. It is impressively unimpressive. It just plays, and from that moment on I just listen and listen. Every time I use it I immediately feel at ease. I am glad it did not sell yet, and I still very much contemplating how to fit it into our small new house.
So my back up plan was, instead of selling the TRP to finance the Golden Gate, to upgrade it with a similar engine as the Golden Gate. So I chose engine 11-p instead of the usual engine 11 and asked Lampizator to install the Duelund Cast copper 1.0uF and the 0.1 Jupiter silver comet as bypass. Idea was to get as close as possible to the Golden Gate sound. Well, wake up call, the Atlantic TRP will never sound as the Golden Gate. It is a different beast all together. And trying to copy the sound is wasting its virtues. I have to accept that the Golden Atlantic TRP is more or less the younger brother of the Golden Gate. It is not as mature and in control. It is a bit ‘out of hand’ and ‘exciting’. It is the Georg Solti of Dacs, whereas the Golden Gate is more Karajan if that makes sense. With Golden Gate you feel the tension in the music building up, you feel the room pressurize. It slowly builds up and prepares your what is about to happen. With Golden Atlantic TRP you do not receive such warning, you are taken for a ride and it is a blast. I have spent a week trying different tube combinations. I will report the results below.
Siemens F2a
I have struggled a lot with this tube. Strange as it was by far my favourite in the TRP2. It is an exceptionally clear tube sound. You hear very deep into the recording, as if an extra layer of haziness is removed. A very transparent sound. It has great presence, great resolution, great bass and bass control. A very transparent, open sounding tube. But…..it proves to be very rectifier dependent.
I first used it with the Telefunken RGN2004 mesh. That is generally the best rectifier in my collection. Clear, dynamic, detailed, refined. So I thought it should fit the F2a well. Not in my system. It is too exciting and I do not say that lightly. For some reason there is not enough depth in the sound. There is not enough foreground-background. It is very upfront, too much so. To be honest, because I was accustomed to the elegance of the Golden gate I could not stand it at all, I just put them on sale with my newly acquired TP adapters….Fortunately I did some more experiments over the weekend. First, it mellows down by using the low gain setting. Still dynamic and upfront but much less than in the high gain setting. I could live with this. If lower gain is the route with the Mesh plate I will do more experiments where to lose gain: in the dac using the low gain setting or in the amplifier because I can use a lower gain driver tube in my 300B amplifier: the E180F instead of the D3a for instance.
Then I tried my reference in the TRP-2, the Elrog 274B. That brought me back to the sound of the F2a I know well. And the difference is quite shocking. The Elrog 274B is nowhere near as upfront and dynamic as the RGN2004 mesh. I set the DAC in its high gain setting and this is well balanced, dynamic, detailed, pleasant, exciting but for the mere mortals. I could live with this combination easily. But strangely enough I also missed some of the excitement of the RGN2004 mesh….I preferred the RGN2004mesh in low gain setting over the Elrog 274B in high gain with the F2a.
Next I tried the Telefunken RGN2004 solid plate. That came as an absolute shocker. The soundstage increased enormously. I used it in high gain setting. A gigantic soundstage, lots of air, and much more depth in the sound. Just much more 3D than the Telefunken RGN2004 mesh. The sound is as clear as a clear blue sky. That changed my perspective on the F2a because now it has enough room to show its stuff. That is what the F2a needed. Now do not get me wrong, in the high gain setting it is still very dynamic and very exciting. But I can handle now. More so, I am loving it. If you want clarity, a clear view, all the details of the recording revealed, than this is the ticket. It shows you all the flaws in the recording as well, but who cares. The TRP with engine 11-p, Siemens F2a and RGN2004 solid plate is the out of control younger brother of the Golden Gate with engine 11-p, PT14 and RGN2004 mesh.
Moral of the story so far, I keep the F2a tubes. But I also started to explore the Indirectly heated triodes. Thanks to Designfx and Budburma. Based on their comments I focused on the CV6 tubes.
GEC CV6
The GEC CV6 maybe has just a bit less resolution than the f2a and PT14. With The F2a and PT14 you really hear when the bow of the violin touches the snare, it has bite. With the GEC CV6 you do not hear that as well. But what the GEC CV6 offers, compared to the F2a, is a very nice sonority, you hear more of the resonances of the wooden body of the violin. That is in a nutshell the difference. The GEC CV6 has a bit less bite but more sonority than the F2a. But don’t even think that this is a warm, cosy, fireplace kind of tube. It is very detailed, dynamic, has great bass depth and control. And remember I compare it with the F2a tube which is together with the PT14 the clearest and cleanest tube sound I know of.
The GEC CV6 with the Telefunken RGN2004 mesh is a fantastic combination. The CV6 brings a lot of depth in the soundstage, much more than the F2a. For some reason that is what the Telefunken RGN2004 mesh needs because the sound is much less forward than with the F2a. There is room to breathe. This depth in the soundstage enables you to feel the tension of the music building up, similar to the PT14 in the Golden Gate. The RGN2004 mesh with the GEC CV6 excel at tonal refinement, naturalness. It has great resolution and detail but it misses the absolute clearness and clarity of the F2a with the RGN2004 solid plate. The tonality is a bit warmer for lack of a better word. It also misses the iron fist control of the F2a in the orchestral tuttis. Do not worry, no tube that I know of has the type of control the F2a has. Control is perfectly fine, but this combination excels in the quieter parts of he music. In that sense it reminds me a bit of the conductor Giulini in Bruckner. I very much love this combination. Totally different than the F2a with RGN2004 solid plate. More humanly sane so to speak, but oh boy that combination F2a and RGN2004 solid plate is exciting…..
Next I tried the GEC CV6 with Telefunken RGN2004 solid plate. For some reason it did not result in the same enormous increase in soundstage width as it did with the F2a. It sounded harder, less elegant than the RGN2004 mesh. I very much preferred the mesh plate with the GEC CV6.
I still have a lot of experimenting to do. I have now tested the GEC CV6 Shaw (P), but on its way is the GEC CV6 Hammersmith (Z), and I also have the Mullard CV6 (red label) at hand. And many other rectifiers…I will come back to discuss the different type of CV6 tubes. Hope this was helpful fo now.
