Introducing My System

[morricab]

A quick update: myself and a bunch of my hi fi buddies have been evaluating the refurbished Apogee Duetta and the Marten Mingus Orchestra in a direct head to head duel.

As things stand now, Marten is tucked away at my storage and I’m immensly enjoying the completely refurbished Apogee Duetta. To be perfectly honest, I was reluctant for many reasons — price, prestige, the build quality of Marten Mingus Orchestra vs. the wiffs of DIY in the Apogee Build, etc. However, with all its faults what the Duetta does right, Marten cannot achieve. The directness, the emotional involvement with the music, the almost analogue tone (not quite sure why) with the same digital front end on both speakers caused this change in the system.

The Rel 31 is now paired with the Duetta quite successfully, adding just the fundamentals without taking away anything from the pureness of the sound.

Down the road, I think the Clarysis Studio Plus, along with Alsyvox Boticelli are the only true contenders.

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Another hot planar speaker tip. Acoustat. Old now and not expensive but really damn good! In fact I replaced my Apogee Caliper Signatures with a pair of Acoustat 1+1 (with medallion transformer upgrade) and later Acoustat Spectra 2200. IMO, these did everything the Caliper Signatures did plus better low level resolution (and therefore coming alive at lower volumes) and better coherence (they were single driver afterall). Find a pair of those, particularly the Spectra series, and you will be again blown away at how much speaker you can get for so little money. The best part of Acoustat electrostatic panels is that they never go bad, unlike most other brands. That is how 40 year old speakers can still sound like new.

There were also some early Acoustats, like the Acoustat X, which is direct drive and come with their own OTL high voltage amps. There is a company in the Netherlands that can rebuild and upgrade these amps but I am told (haven't heard them) that this is the most unbelievable sound in terms of transparency, resolution, tone etc. There are guys in the US that bought them new 45 years ago and never had any urge to try other things.

 

[Argonaut]

There were also some early Acoustats, like the Acoustat X, which is direct drive and come with their own OTL high voltage amps.

Listened for many hours to a friends pair , great fun , Particularly fine with vocal as one would expect however very good with large scale classical classical in the main due to a manufacturer claim of 30hZ , which whilst being perhaps a touch optimistic certainly not far off ! Even a touch of ‘plasticky panel’ when driven really hard didn’t spoil the enjoyment , the self contained Servo-Charge OTL amplifiers are very interesting tho I seem to recall the Quad Drive running the 6HB5’s a tad on the toasty side.

https://user.faktiskt.io/lennartj/Audio/Acoustat X.pdf