Ron’s New System

[morricab]

I experienced exactly this yesterday. I put my SET 845 in and it is lush. Rounded. Very pleasant. But the PP KT88 (120 now) is much faster, vibrant, dynamic and natual . You feel the bass hit with rhe KT88. With the 845, is a soft lanket of bass. The PP KT88 It ust way better. You notice the very apparent losses with the SET845.

Even if the crossover was vastly simplified the PP would remain that much more dynamic and percussive over the SET. Maybe one could argue, a horn or something as such is so dynamic, your trying to tame it with a softer amp. That may be true. I don't know. I only hear people say its important to match the amp to the load.

Sorry, you are comparing ONE SET against ONE PP amp and drawing general conclusions…it should be obvious what’s wrong with doing that. Your Audion Black Shadow is not representative of the best SET has to offer…

 

[microstrip]

Full DH. But, the speakers only had 5 or 6 hours on them. And he just put them in the room. We could hear the potential. The system has a ways to go. I will go back when ts more mature.
Tough room too. Lots of glass. Thin space, then opens to a large space. Many reflections. The side wall is about 3 feet from the side of the speaker.

But the miraculous C-Wave did not overcome all these small problems?
Are you now a converted?

 

[Atmasphere]

Long RCAs normally should be rolling off the high frequencies rather than accentuating them.
Could it be possible that they are running the preamp into oscillation that is causing ultrasonic frequencies and there is IMD that is making high frequency harmonics?

I mentioned this earlier but so far Ron hasn't supplied any data. Despite a long cable usually causing a roll off, if the preamp employs feedback you can have a situation where there is a peak just prior to rolling off. This is common with many designs that employ feedback and is part of the filter theory pantheon. If the capacitive load is high enough that peak could be occurring at the upper end of the audio band.

That is hypothesis #1.

An alternate hypothesis presents itself as well. If the preamp has no feedback, and also lacks current drive ability (such as a tube design with a plate follower output), the capacitive load of the long cable could be causing the preamp to distort which is interpreted by the ear as brightness (and also harshness). You would not need bandwidth for this to happen since the ear interprets distortion as tonality.

Either way its seems like a good experiment would be to temporarily use a short cable and see if either hypothesis bears fruit.

The long interconnects are a weight on each amplifier. Please recall that the room + system has no brightness issue when using Jadis.

Keep in mind also that all amplifiers have input capacitance. Until you try some of these things (like a shorter cable) you won't really know what is going on. If a shorter cable yields null you still learn something (which would point more to the difference between amps).

Hypothesis #3:

Do the Italian amps use feedback? If no, it could be responding to the rising impedance of the speaker at high frequencies by making too much energy. For more on this see The Voltage vs Power Paradigms. As I understand it the Jadis amps (at least the ones I've seen) use feedback and so can avoid making too much energy with a rising impedance in the speaker.

Move the speakers when you use the SET 845 and you can get much of the bass to return. Of course the 845 will not sound completely like the PP KT88 but it can be improved upon.

Its a Bad Idea to allow an SET to play bass!

The output transformer of almost any SET lacks the inductance to support bass frequencies, since the core of the transformer is cut to prevent saturation distortion from DC current flowing thru it. So it starts to express the DC resistance of the winding which is quite low compared to the load impedance the tube is designed to drive; this is hard on the tube and not how you want to treat an expensive power tube. So the load line of the power tube becomes elliptical at low frequencies; another way of saying it makes lots of distortion and is hard on the tube.

If you limit bass to an SET you'll find it sounds a lot better; easy to hear/easy to measure how much better.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

What is truth? The only real truth in stereo is the main objective of sound reproduction - listener enjoyment. Listeners differ enough to preclude an universal truth - at best we can have some "local" truths , such as accuracy (freedom of artifacts) or acceptance of some "benign" forms of distortion and noise. BTW, just addressing electronics and sources, speakers are a completely different subject.

i think there is a sometimes 'rawness' to live music which requires a certain state of mind and even maybe an acquired taste to embrace. and in reproduction sometimes it can not translate with beauty and ease. it might require the live engagement factor to be appreciated. music media and music reproduction mostly mitigates this rawness in it's process. it's a balancing act. according to taste.

Are you addressing objective or subjective artifacts?

we judge colorations through our own subjective references. one man's warm and rounded is another man's neutral. and so on.

Yes, our particular "feeling of realism" surely helps suspension of disbelief.

this part is not conscious; it's our 'spidey sense' that tickles the hairs on the back or our neck that there is a monster ready to eat us.

could be real?

 

[morricab]

Totally disagree. I was just at a house listening to a Daniel Hertz setup. The owner is pretty good with a violin. He stood in front of us and played. It was AMAZING. I would not say you can't overpower a room with live musicians. My godness, many people overpower the room with their stereo playing too loud.

If one were to say the real violin played in front of us was bright and they wanted to gloss it over. Well, I would say, don't waste your money on a good stereo.

I did just that with my ex, recording her playing Paganini Caprices standing between my speakers. The violin was a Stradivarius and it did indeed overpower the room….to the point my ears were pulsating and it was hard to not saturate the tape (R2R).

 

[Ron Resnick]

a list of objectives?

Can you please point me to the list?

Please see: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/thre...utual-understanding-and-predictability.22285/

 

[Ron Resnick]

An alternate hypothesis presents itself as well. If the preamp has no feedback, and also lacks current drive ability (such as a tube design with a plate follower output), the capacitive load of the long cable could be causing the preamp to distort which is interpreted by the ear as brightness (and also harshness). You would not need bandwidth for this to happen since the ear interprets distortion as tonality.

Hypothesis #3:

Do the Italian amps use feedback? If no, it could be responding to the rising impedance of the speaker at high frequencies by making too much energy. For more on this see The Voltage vs Power Paradigms. As I understand it the Jadis amps (at least the ones I've seen) use feedback and so can avoid making too much energy with a rising impedance in the speaker.

The Mastersound PF100 Litz amplifier does not use any feedback.

The Aries Cerat Incito S preamplifier does not use any feedback.

Each of the ribbon drivers in the Clarisys speakers has a pretty flat impedance.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Its a Bad Idea to allow an SET to play bass!


If you limit bass to an SET you'll find it sounds a lot better; easy to hear/easy to measure how much better.

For the purpose of this admonition, at what frequency are you considering bass to end?

In other words above what frequencies do you think SETs are qualified to play?

 

[microstrip]

I mentioned this earlier but so far Ron hasn't supplied any data.

I have asked it sometime ago, but Ron could not supply data on it - what is the capacitance per foot or meter of his cables?

I have measured values as low a 50pf per meter up to 1000 pf per meter in the high-end. Unfortunately I had invested in a long run (8 meters) of these last XLR cables and they ruined the sound of an excellent tube preamplifier.

 

[hopkins]

I did just that with my ex, recording her playing Paganini Caprices standing between my speakers. The violin was a Stradivarius and it did indeed overpower the room….to the point my ears were pulsating and it was hard to not saturate the tape (R2R).

I think we can assume that most people enjoy live music when they get a chance to experience it, even when in sub-optimal acoustic conditions:

There are obviously always exceptions.

 

[Atmasphere]

The Mastersound PF100 Litz amplifier does not use any feedback.

The Aries Cerat Incito S preamplifier does not use any feedback.

Each of the ribbon drivers in the Clarisys speakers has a pretty flat impedance.

thanks for this additional information!

Actually any dynamic driver has a rising impedance with frequency. The typical impedance curve can be seen on this page.

This sort of thing is easily demonstrated in the measurements. In this case, if measuring the actual impedance curve of the speaker you'll see that it does rise at the upper end of the band. If a tube amp without feedback is used, the amp will not throttle back power as the impedance rises. Tube amps without feedback will instead try to make constant power.

So this looks like a simple equipment mismatch to me. You won't get around it by changing tubes, interconnect or the like. A ZOBEL network, attached to the speaker or amp terminals to reduce high frequency energy by reducing the impedance is the solution. It will be a resistor (likely about 8-16 Ohms) and capacitor in series.

above what frequencies do you think SETs are qualified to play?

About 200Hz. Below that you see the load line get increasingly elliptical until it starts to have more in common with a beach ball. In case its not clear the load line of a tube is a design thing and describes the tube's distortion and whether the tube will hold up in the application. It should be a straight line.

If you read that article I linked earlier then you would know that trying to use Power Paradigm equipment (Mastersound) with a loudspeaker meant to be designed with Voltage rules in mind will result in a tonal anomaly.

This right now is the simplest explanation for the brightness. So I no longer think this has anything to do with the interconnect.

 

[DasguteOhr]

I think 1kohm input impedance of mastersound amps will be the dilemma.
You need a high current preamp

 

[Atmasphere]

I think 1kohm input impedance of mastersound amps will be the dilemma.
You need a high current preamp

Its not that low from what I can find but it is lower than you would expect (perhaps 28KOhms) to see in tube equipment. Some tube preamps will not take kindly to that.

 

[Al M.]

Actually any dynamic driver has a rising impedance with frequency. The typical impedance curve can be seen on this page.

The Clarysis are ribbon drivers. Does the rising impedance hold there as well?

 

[DasguteOhr]

Its not that low from what I can find but it is lower than you would expect (perhaps 28KOhms) to see in tube equipment. Some tube preamps will not take kindly to that.

I was mistaken—it's a different model from Mastersound. There's no input impedance information for the PF 100 on the Mastersound homepage.

 

[bonzo75]

I was mistaken—it's a different model from Mastersound. There's no input impedance information for the PF 100 on the Mastersound homepage.

But will still need high current amp

 

[Atmasphere]

The Clarysis are ribbon drivers. Does the rising impedance hold there as well?

Yes.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I have asked it sometime ago, but Ron could not supply data on it - what is the capacitance per foot or meter of his cables?

I'm glad I give you guys something to do.

I do not see a published capacitance per foot figure for Cardas Clear Reflection interconnect.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

But will still need high current amp

hasn't he tried the Westminster's?

 

[microstrip]

I was mistaken—it's a different model from Mastersound. There's no input impedance information for the PF 100 on the Mastersound homepage.

Unfortunately many times the information supplied by the manufacturer in the web pages is not correct. The best way of being sure is measuring it.