Neutral power amp recommendations?

[mtemur]

You sound like the religious ;-)

If I say, "The center of the earth is made of molten cheese, do you have anything to prove I'm wrong?" That doesn't make it true.

You made the statement that MBL amps have a frequency range bump and their speaker have a frequency range dip, the burden of proof is on you to prove it is true.

I wonder if you ever heard MBL amp and speakers paired with other components. If you heard then which models?

I don’t rely solely on measurements and my comment about MBL isn’t based on measurements. Although I don’t consider it as a proof but still it may give you an idea. What does below FR measurement of MBL 101 speakers tell you?


I took this measurement from Stereophile’s review. I hope they don’t mind.

 

[bonzo75]

I wonder if you ever heard MBL amp and speakers paired with other components. If you heard then which models?

I compared MBL amps to Spectral on 101 and preferred spectral. Not that I like spectral but they are better than MBL. And the Ypsilon hybrid was better than MBL integrated amp on the 111

 

[mtemur]

Most amps just can't drive the more difficult MBL speaker properly, even big SS amps like Krell lack the grunt in the midbass required to come alive. MBL amps have a synergy with these speakers, but sound very neutral on other speakers. The big 9011 amps sound amazing on my Martin Logans, a easier speaker system to drive than MBL.

I agree with you. I always like MBL speakers with MBL amplification, especially with the 9011. The last time I listened to MBL 101, it was probably the fifth pair I had listened to over the years. Pairing it with TAD mono blocks was very good. I still think MBL 9011 would be a better match.

 

[DasguteOhr]

The bandpath woofer is a mean beast low impedance with high phase angle at port frequency. this embarrasses many amplifiers and the rest of the playback suffers. choose the amplifier carefully.my tip

 

[Holmz]

The bandpath woofer is a mean beast low impedance with high phase angle at port frequency. this embarrasses many amplifiers and the rest of the playback suffers. choose the amplifier carefully.my tip

Bandpass subs have nasty group delay characteristics, and the transient response is not great.
But for an LFE, and more steady state (maybe techno?) they work.

They also do not have out of band distrotion, which can tempt some to crank it up and the distress does not come through as a warning.

The group delay of the bandpass is “orders of magnitude” more than the amp.

 

[DasguteOhr]

Bandpass subs have nasty group delay characteristics, and the transient response is not great.
But for an LFE, and more steady state (maybe techno?) they work.

They also do not have out of band distrotion, which can tempt some to crank it up and the distress does not come through as a warning.

The group delay of the bandpass is “orders of magnitude” more than the amp.

My tip, bi amping the speaker with iron-hard fast amp for the woofer like bryston 7b mono amps. they laugh at such a load. I don't know of any other amp that doesn't care what the phase angle or how high the capacitance load is like bryston.

 

[Atmasphere]

Sure Ralph !

That's my customer feedback.

The problem we ran into with the MA-2 was the speaker has a midrange driver that is 8 Ohms while the rest of the drivers are 4. Because the MA-2 doesn't employ feedback, it put too much energy into that driver, causing brightness. That was solved by a Zobel network that absorbed energy at those frequencies.

Any competent tube amp of sufficient power can drive that speaker. It will work fine with class D amps too.

 

[Lagonda]

That's my customer feedback.

The problem we ran into with the MA-2 was the speaker has a midrange driver that is 8 Ohms while the rest of the drivers are 4. Because the MA-2 doesn't employ feedback, it put too much energy into that driver, causing brightness. That was solved by a Zobel network that absorbed energy at those frequencies.

Any competent tube amp of sufficient power can drive that speaker. It will work fine with class D amps too.

Sure Ralph, after employing a "Zobel network" your amps can drive the speakers, i will get right on that !

 

[sbo6]

I wonder if you ever heard MBL amp and speakers paired with other components. If you heard then which models?

I don’t rely solely on measurements and my comment about MBL isn’t based on measurements. Although I don’t consider it as a proof but still it may give you an idea. What does below FR measurement of MBL 101 speakers tell you?

View attachment 143290
I took this measurement from Stereophile’s review. I hope they don’t mind.

Without reading the context, not too much. However, I found the measurement from Stereophile.
Graph information: Fig.3 mbl 101E, anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50", averaged across 30 degrees horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with the nearfield midrange response plotted below 300Hz and the nearfield bandpass port response plotted in red.

Since these 2 measurements were taken separately, the summation likely yields a flatter response from ~60 - 100Hz.

Also it states, "The rise between 80Hz and 300Hz is entirely due to the nearfield measurement technique—the 101E actually has a superbly flat response throughout the midrange and treble."