Natural Sound

the hybrids, like Brad said, aren’t good. They were by far the least good sounding with Sigma MAAT and Toni (TZBC) had them as well, he moved on from them and both of us had a similar impression in different systems. Maybe they work with very inefficient speakers. i haven’t heard any good hybrid except for the thrax hybrid. The Ypsilon hybrid was also mediocre.

Thanks for sharing your opinion Bonzo. If anyone reads it, it will discourage them from buying these old products and driving up the prices. Some of us will then benefit. I appreciate it.
 
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Yes you need more backups for sure. People will be impressed when you buy three or four of the same thing. You can then set up a Clarisys with Lamm hybrid as third system
 
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Yes you need more backups for sure. People will be impressed when you buy three or four of the same thing. You can then set up a Clarisys with Lamm hybrid as third system
Ked what are your impressions of Athma-Spere amps ?:eek:
 
I shared the measurements of my amplifiers somewhere earlier in the thread, specifically the plot of total harmonic distortion versus power into a 16 ohm load on the 16 ohm output.

As my speakers are 16 ohm, 105 DB efficient in a small room and I listen at maybe 70 to 80 dB with peaks at 90, i figure I do not use much power. The distortion figure at 20 Hz, 1000 Hz, and 20,000 Hz ranges between .2 and 1% at 3 Watts of power. At full power 18W it’s 2%. I wonder if I ever use more than 3 W.

In the end, I am more interested in the way something sounds than how it measures, but I’m not a designer. We make our choices based on what sounds best to us. It’s nice to have choices. Good luck with your designs and thank you for your interest in my system thread.
Just to give you a perspective, if you had a set of our M-60, which make 80 Watts into 16 Ohms, at 2 Watts you'd have trouble measuring the distortion. You can hear that in the same way you can tell the difference between a cheap violin and a Strat- by the difference in harmonic structure. Add harmonics and it changes the sound. Literally the harmonics of SETs is the attraction, but IMO (I use LPs I recorded myself for reference) they are far too rich so its easier to characterize them as musical instruments rather than musical reproducers.

The other issue with SETs is they can't play bass because the cut core of the output transformer has too little inductance. So it becomes very hard for the tube to make bass. By comparison a PP amp can go one or 2 octaves lower with full power and our amps are flat to 2Hz (so no phase shift at all at 20Hz).

I like the sound of SETs, but they aren't convincing when it comes to sounding real.
 
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Just to give you a perspective, if you had a set of our M-60, which make 80 Watts into 16 Ohms, at 2 Watts you'd have trouble measuring the distortion. You can hear that in the same way you can tell the difference between a cheap violin and a Strat- by the difference in harmonic structure. Add harmonics and it changes the sound. Literally the harmonics of SETs is the attraction, but IMO (I use LPs I recorded myself for reference) they are far too rich so its easier to characterize them as musical instruments rather than musical reproducers.

The other issue with SETs is they can't play bass because the cut core of the output transformer has too little inductance. So it becomes very hard for the tube to make bass. By comparison a PP amp can go one or 2 octaves lower with full power and our amps are flat to 2Hz (so no phase shift at all at 20Hz).

I like the sound of SETs, but they aren't convincing when it comes to sounding real.

Ralph, I actually like the quality the base in my current system very much. So I disagree with your generalization that SET’s can’t play bass. Madfloyd,, a bass musician, shared his impressions of the sound of the bass in my system on page 2 or 3 of this very thread. He seems to also disagree with you about SETs not being able to do bass.

I heard your amps at a couple of shows. Perhaps your class D amps have even lower distortion. I wish you every success.
 
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The other issue with SETs is they can't play bass because the cut core of the output transformer has too little inductance. So it becomes very hard for the tube to make bass. By comparison a PP amp can go one or 2 octaves lower with full power and our amps are flat to 2Hz (so no phase shift at all at 20Hz).
PP can give more bass than sets for sure, that is audio 101. Does that mean you will use a Krell over PP. that also does more bass. You just need better speakers then
 
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Yes you need more backups for sure. People will be impressed when you buy three or four of the same thing. You can then set up a Clarisys with Lamm hybrid as third system

I think you know by now that I’m not really into panel speakers and I like more efficient designs. The hybrid M1 .1 sounded excellent on my Magico system. And this L1, hybrid preamp sounds excellent in my current system. I am very happy with it. Have you ever heard it?

I bought an extra preamp and phono stage below the Lamm reference level to have fun with hearing differences and maybe assembling a second system one day. They are also less expensive. I did buy a second copy of the same amps to have as spares, for a second system, or possibly if I ever decide to an a lot experiment with subwoofers in a different room. In this case, I want them to be the same model amp. That’s not the case with the preamp and the phone stage, so no multiple copies as you suggest.

Perhaps one day you will add videos and comments about Ron’s Pendragon versus Clarisys to your travel blog.
 
I think you know by now that I’m not really into panel speakers and I like more efficient designs. The hybrid M1 .1 sounded excellent on my Magico system. And this L1, hybrid preamp sounds excellent in my current system. I am very happy with it. Have you ever heard it?

I bought an extra preamp and phono stage below the Lamm reference level to have fun with hearing differences and maybe assembling a second system one day. They are also less expensive. I did buy a second copy of the same amps to have as spares, for a second system, or possibly if I ever decide to an a lot experiment with subwoofers in a different room. In this case, I want them to be the same model amp. That’s not the case with the preamp and the phone stage, so no multiple copies as you suggest.

Perhaps one day you will add videos and comments about Ron’s Pendragon versus Clarisys to your travel blog.
I have nothing against SS preamps. I don’t know the Lamm hybrid preamp, I was referring to the hybrid amp
 
I have nothing against SS preamps. I don’t know the Lamm hybrid preamp, I was referring to the hybrid amp

That’s what I suspected. This discussion started out being about the sound of my new L1 hybrid preamp until someone turned it into an amplifier discussion. I do not know if Ralph has heard or measured it either.
 
I shared the measurements of my amplifiers somewhere earlier in the thread, specifically the plot of total harmonic distortion versus power into a 16 ohm load on the 16 ohm output.

As my speakers are 16 ohm, 105 DB efficient in a small room and I listen at maybe 70 to 80 dB with peaks at 90, i figure I do not use much power. The distortion figure at 20 Hz, 1000 Hz, and 20,000 Hz ranges between .2 and 1% at 3 Watts of power. At full power 18W it’s 2%. I wonder if I ever use more than 3 W.

In the end, I am more interested in the way something sounds than how it measures, but I’m not a designer. We make our choices based on what sounds best to us. It’s nice to have choices. Good luck with your designs and thank you for your interest in my system thread.
Most of the time you are using mW, so distortion will be suitably low and of low order. Ralph is wrong that 3rd in isolation sweetens things a bit. The lower the order the more benign the effect…no harmonic is lower than 2nd and it is necessary for masking higher orders…Lamm understood and follows that pattern quite well with the ML2…Ralph’s OTLs and class D amps don’t follow this pattern….a pattern determined by Jean Hiraga to have ideal sound characteristics. Cheever came up with the same pattern. As long as the distortion follows the same pattern as the ear/brains own distortion it will be masked…this means it is also SPL dependent. This is one reasonwhy sensitivity matters. The amp can stay longer in the ideal range.
 
Ralph, I actually like the quality the base in my current system very much. So I disagree with your generalization that SET’s can’t play bass. Madfloyd,, a bass musician, shared his impressions of the sound of the bass in my system on page 2 or 3 of this very thread. He seems to also disagree with you about SETs not being able to do bass.

I heard your amps at a couple of shows. Perhaps your class D amps have even lower distortion. I wish you every success.
Thanks!

This seems like one of those things you have to hear to really appreciate. The deeper your speakers go, the easier this is to hear.

I've played string bass since 6th grade and still do (as well as keyboards) today. Low E on a bass is only 40Hz. There's a whole nuther octave below that and some pipe organs can do 16 Hz. SETs simply can't play that stuff with any power (the type 45 power tube does it best but you can really only hear what it does on headphones since its power is so low).

If you have a gapped output transformer (and most SETs do) there is never enough inductance to play bass properly (let alone damping). The load line turns into an ellipse in the presence of low bass. The lower portion of that ellipse is not where you want to operate a tube. To prevent saturation of the OPT, most SET designers will cut off the lows earlier in the circuit so the mids and highs will be cleaner. This introduces phase shift in the bass region (since the cutoff is usually a 6dB slope) which extends to 10X the cutoff frequency. The ear perceives this as a lack of impact despite the frequency being in-band. That's why we extend our OTL amps down to 2Hz.

The other thing you might want to consider is what happens when you have a PP amp of the same class of operation and output power is the sacred SET. Such tube amps are hard to find! But if you do find one and its built properly you'll find it does not take a back seat to SETs in any way that audiophiles value.

Put another way, when SET lovers compare PP to SET, the playing field is never level. If you really want to hear what PP does, make that amp using the same tube complement as the SET with similar build quality. A 7 Watt 300b becomes 35 Watts. Topology is important too: as Norman Crowhurst (the tube guru of the late 1950s) points out, if you put a single-ended front end on a PP amp, thru algebraic summing you wind up with a 5th harmonic that's not masked very well by the 2nd and 3rd. My surmise is most of the PP amps compared to SETs have this problem.

So more about that: SETs express a quadratic non-linearity, which results in a dominant 2nd harmonic. If the amp if fully differential and balanced, a cubic non-linearity is expressed. The cubic non-linearity is inherently lower distortion. But if you combine the two, the 5th shows up stronger and I've no doubt that's why SET lovers disdain PP amps, not realizing the problem isn't PP but topology.

So the kind of PP amp you really want to hear is one that does not combine SE with PP but instead is entirely balanced and differential from input to output.
 
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Ralph, I am reminded of Jonathan Weiss teaching us why his direct drive turntable, and all direct drive turntables, “if designed properly”, are better than belt drive turntables.

I am not curious about exploring alternatives to my Lamm SET amplifiers. Perhaps you should move this lesson over to the SET dedicated thread. More people are likely to appreciate your expertise and information about your products over there.
 
They are similar; the tube Lamm equipment we've had in the shop was quite good. Owing to our use a balanced lines and more direct-coupling, both at the output of our balanced tube preamps and also our tube power amplifiers, our gear was more transparent by comparison.

Our equipment tends to have a prominent 3rd harmonic rather than the 2nd. The 3rd appears in our gear at a level a bit less than the 3rd does in a typical SET. So as a result the amps tend to make only about 0.5 to 1% THD at full power (compare with 10% for almost any SET at clipping; many SETs are rated below clipping to avoid this value being published) with IMD much less -about 0.05% or less. The 3rd is treated by the ear the same as the 2nd (properly functioning tape machines make a 3rd harmonic also, just for perspective).

Electronics that have the 3rd as the dominant harmonic tend to be lower distortion overall than those that produce the 2nd as dominant. In our equipment this is because even orders are cancelled throughout the circuit so distortion is not compounded as much as in single-ended circuits.

So this information tells us that the Atma-Sphere equipment does not sound as lush as anything single-ended simply owing to the distortion being significantly lower. Its more neutral yet isn't dry since the 3rd sweetens things up a bit. Since distortion is lower overall, low level detail is easier to make out because distortion tends to obscure detail. IME this is easy to hear- and most people notice it in only a few seconds.

We had the hybrid Lamm here as well. IMO that amplifier sounds bright and really isn't in the same league as their tube stuff.

My model for a two channel stereo is it makes your room into a sort of space/time machine where the front wall vanishes and the room is grafted into the musical event. This isn't a perfect model as 2 mic true stereo recordings can pick up audience sound that would be indistinct if the room were really grafted into the musical event. But its the best working model I've seen so far.
Interesting.
 
the hybrids, like Brad said, aren’t good. They were by far the least good sounding with Sigma MAAT and Toni (TZBC) had them as well, he moved on from them and both of us had a similar impression in different systems. Maybe they work with very inefficient speakers.

"I have heard the Lamm hybrids sound wonderful through Apogee Scintillas, but the Sigma speaker is not a recommended match." kedar

Blanket statements about amplifiers are usually fruitless. Statements about an amplifier-speaker pairing can be helpful.

I've owned the Lamm M1.2 monos for the last 12 years and found them excellent with the Audio Physics Avanti Century, three different Wilson speakers, the WVL Son and my current JBL M9500s. The M1.2 works very well with ARC linestages (Ref 5SE, Ref 10) and best with Lamm linestages (L2.1 Ref, LL1.1 Sig). They have proved super reliable and likely I will never sell them. I do like the Lamm ML2.2s even more than the M1.2 and with the WVL and JBL they sound best. If the Lamm 'X-Factor' is its distortion signature, it is a signature congruent with that of the human hearing mechanism -- with the way people actually hear.

I get that Ralph is talking his book as do most manufacturers and dealers do on WBF. Having reviewed the Atma-Sphere M-60 and for six years owned his MA-1 Mk.3.1 amps with the MP-1 preamp (a true preamp). I like the Atma-Sphere gear (and said so in print) but the amps were not suited well for the less efficient Wilsons, and autoformers (which I tried) did not help. Build quality is impeccable. Atma-Sphere is highly transparent and its ability to pull out low frequency notes from a mix is the best I've heard; ultimately I find the Lamm bass more natural sounding.
 
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"I have heard the Lamm hybrids sound wonderful through Apogee Scintillas, but the Sigma speaker is not a recommended match." kedar
This is correct, it sounded better than Krell, but scintilla is a very unique speaker usually requiring and mated with Krell’s.

For most speakers I rate today, the amplifier choice is just too high to make either of those even in the top ten or maybe twenty
 
Thanks!

This seems like one of those things you have to hear to really appreciate. The deeper your speakers go, the easier this is to hear.

I've played string bass since 6th grade and still do (as well as keyboards) today. Low E on a bass is only 40Hz. There's a whole nuther octave below that and some pipe organs can do 16 Hz. SETs simply can't play that stuff with any power (the type 45 power tube does it best but you can really only hear what it does on headphones since its power is so low).

If you have a gapped output transformer (and most SETs do) there is never enough inductance to play bass properly (let alone damping). The load line turns into an ellipse in the presence of low bass. The lower portion of that ellipse is not where you want to operate a tube. To prevent saturation of the OPT, most SET designers will cut off the lows earlier in the circuit so the mids and highs will be cleaner. This introduces phase shift in the bass region (since the cutoff is usually a 6dB slope) which extends to 10X the cutoff frequency. The ear perceives this as a lack of impact despite the frequency being in-band. That's why we extend our OTL amps down to 2Hz.

The other thing you might want to consider is what happens when you have a PP amp of the same class of operation and output power is the sacred SET. Such tube amps are hard to find! But if you do find one and its built properly you'll find it does not take a back seat to SETs in any way that audiophiles value.

Put another way, when SET lovers compare PP to SET, the playing field is never level. If you really want to hear what PP does, make that amp using the same tube complement as the SET with similar build quality. A 7 Watt 300b becomes 35 Watts. Topology is important too: as Norman Crowhurst (the tube guru of the late 1950s) points out, if you put a single-ended front end on a PP amp, thru algebraic summing you wind up with a 5th harmonic that's not masked very well by the 2nd and 3rd. My surmise is most of the PP amps compared to SETs have this problem.

So more about that: SETs express a quadratic non-linearity, which results in a dominant 2nd harmonic. If the amp if fully differential and balanced, a cubic non-linearity is expressed. The cubic non-linearity is inherently lower distortion. But if you combine the two, the 5th shows up stronger and I've no doubt that's why SET lovers disdain PP amps, not realizing the problem isn't PP but topology.

So the kind of PP amp you really want to hear is one that does not combine SE with PP but instead is entirely balanced and differential from input to output.
Sounds like my amps. Transformer coupled, differential design PP making 40 watts. Best amp ever in my system.
 
Right. My sense is you don't rate speakers today that need their output.
The ironic thing is that some Wilsons were once easy to drive, like the X1. It and the X2 both worked well with the ML2 and later ML3. Newer ones became less and less friendly…
 
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The M1.2 works very well with ARC linestages (Ref 5SE, Ref 10) and best with Lamm linestages (L2.1 Ref, LL1.1 Sig).
Why best with Lamm line stages?

In what ways did the Lamm line stages sound better than ARC REF 10?
 

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