Hi DetroitVinylRob,
Speaking of Tungars, John stopped by my house and helped setup the T 1.5s. They survived the one-year hibernation in storage, yeah. I took out the horn section and kept those with me in the apartment and brought them with me in a U-Haul along with other audio equipment and special edition records. It took about a good 1.5 - 2 hours to get the speakers reassembled. We had to unpack the speakers first and remove all of the shipping protection that John sent me to protect the speakers prior to them getting loaded on the moving truck and stored for nearly a year. These are huge beasts, but they fit nicely in the new room which is larger than the last room. The new room dimensions are 32 X 22 X 10. Those were the dimensions before double 5/8 drywall, Greenglue and resilient channel throughout the entire room, floor to ceiling.
John also brought a brand-new pair of Tungars. How can I say no. These were brand new in the box so I got to witness opening the boxes and installation of the tubes. These Tungar power supplies are very heavy. After tube installation, we moved them into the listening room to wire them to the T 1.5s. The BK Precision PS connection is different than the Tungars and the T 1.5s had to be reconfigured to be able to power both the mids and bass separately for use with the Tungars. It's easy and the T series are ready for a dual power supply option. I guess you know that based on your experimentation of the two BK Precisions PS for each speaker and I assume you had to rewire yours the same way to be able to power the midrange and bass drivers separately.
John and Mike left before I was able to cable all of the audio components and begin testing. I tested each component individually before I connected everything in a chain. One Mcintosh amp needed a set of new tubes because it went into fault mode when the plate power grid would power up. I will isolate the bad tube once I can locate the tube tester. The house is in chaos from all of the moving boxes and with stuff not in the rooms that they are supposed to be in.
Sound with the Tungars: Oh my!!! All I can say is from initial play to a warmed up system. The clarity in the mids and depth of the bass was just incredible after the entire system was warmed up. It was a total night and day difference. Some of that is atypical of tube warm up, especially in the Aesthetix Io dual power supply setup, we all know that song, but things seemed different this time. It seemed as though the music was effortless in its ability to play back vocals and capture the venue with more presence. My wife said that it seemed as if the acoustic space was more realistic. We were playing Joe Bonamassa release "Live At Carnegie Hall" and the song we chose to sample was "Drive".
I had to remind her that the room is not measured and treated yet and the room is larger. We both agreed that despite the current state of the room and not being able to play my better turntable, arms (SME/Transrotor), and cartridges (Hyperion/Opus 1), the Transrotor Dark Star with Hyperion Sussaro MKII was really a good shoe-in to test the Tungar power supplies and it all sounded great to us. The same voltage was used for the mids (15vdc) and bass (18vdc) as what John recommended for dual BK Precisions power supplies on each speaker. I only had a few hours of listening, but it was a great start and no noticeable increase in room temps despite all of the tubes, 64 of them. The Tungars felt tube warm but not hot.
As a wrap up, I would say that powering each of the field coil drivers in the Classic Audio T series is well worth the upgrade due to the sonic improvements. The depth of bass was seriously something that I noted. I walked out of the room and closed the door, left the volume to run the amps around 30 watts with 100 watt peaks, the sound was loud and clear in the room but outside it was as if I had turned on a subwoofer. I know the 18" downward bass driver could do bass well at my last house but this seems different as the drums and bass were definitely deeper outside the room. No, not a muddy bass like some car stereo blasting windows out and bass resonance galore, this was super deep bass that was as if I had turned on a subwoofer. I like it. Going back to the mids and highs, I tweaked the mid and high pots on the speakers to straight up as a starting point. I left the pots at those settings throughout the listening session and I felt that that was probably the ideal setting with the Tungars. Just to reiterate, the midrange presence appeared to have way more depth adding to the space of the venue. When Joe sings, it reverberates throughout the room with the ambient live feeling that you get, well, at a live venue that has ambience.
Using Shunyata Sigma NR2 on the Tungars and on most source equipment. Each Tungar is plugged in their own 15 amp circuit.
It would be interesting to get together to compare these two setups. Enclosed are some pics. I am north of Grand Rapids in small town USA, LOL. We could meet at Classic Audio for a demo day as well. 2 hours for me one way to Brighton.
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Love your walk in "wardrobe"
Did you compare the power supplies in your new room?