Ron's Speaker, Turntable, Power and Room Treatment Upgrades

[LL21]

I have a question, gentlemen. How the heck am I going to "hatch" this system all at once?

It cannot happen all at once, because I am starting with nothing....Does this make sense? Is some other sequence more logical or more prudent?

We [sort of] did this when we moved. We had the whole system brought over, placed all the equipment, hooked it all up...but the speakers had not been readjusted/recalibrated for the new room. And we had no speaker cables either. It sat like that for over 3 months...the good thing is we had the opportunity to tidy everything up perfectly after the movers left. The problem was we did not know if anything was broken until we finally got the cables in...that was a risk we took.

In your case, i would setup amp first and get the system playing music...otherwise, every other installer comes, plunks it down...and since there is nothing to listen to...leaves. How will you know the preamp or TT or digital even works...even if it turns on...there might still be a problem with the left channel you wont discover til the system is up and running?

Assuming your installers/dealers are prepared to set up and come back, you also still have twice as many visits.

 

[PeterA]

I think the wait is driving you mad. This reads more like philosophy than anything else.

If the room is done, put the Pendragons in. Start connecting stuff. If you have a used version of something install it till you get/decide what you're really going to use.

I agree with Folsom. This wait seems endless and you must be going nuts. I'd focus your efforts on getting the contractors to finish the job. Are all of the renovation decisions made? Give the workers a deadline. The rest will fall into place. You've got furnishings and move-in to worry about long before your can think about the audio system integration. With all of that delicate and expensive gear, I'd have the home theater and all workers out of the house and long gone before any of that audio gear arrives. When the time comes, you will basically be assembling a system which you have never heard before. If you are still concerned about how certain components will fit in, hold off and cobble together something for sound and speaker break in. Then get the cartridges, tonearms, cables as time allows. OR, buy all the parts and then have David come over for a week to deliver the turntable and set the whole system up starting with the basics and no tweaks.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, Micro, and XV-1. The only thing I prefer about the bookshelf speakers is that I’d rather fry them than the Gryphons.

 

[Ron Resnick]

VTLs are fuse protected and have an output transformer - IMHO you can connect them without any risk to your new speakers. Although I never connect an unknown solid state DC coupled amplifier to my speakers without first measuring it looking for DC, I never go though these procedures with transformer coupled amplifiers. At best I switch them on and keep my hand close to the switch for two minutes.

Actually, that’s a good point. I am a bit traumatized because one of my old Manley 150s literally spontaneously combusted and went up in flames, but my MG-IIIA was undamaged.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you LL21 and Peter.

All renovation and repair decisions are made, yes. We are not moving ourselves or a single thing back in until the entire place is repaired and finished.

I want to install there stereo stuff into a perfectly clean, empty room.

 

[LL21]

Thank you LL21 and Peter.

All renovation and repair decisions are made, yes. We are not moving ourselves or a single thing back in until the entire place is repaired and finished.

I want to install there stereo stuff into a perfectly clean, empty room.

that is exactly what we did.

 

[JackD201]

Same here when a retaining wall in my listening room sprung a leak. I gutted everything but the ceilings went with space frame and shotcrete instead of plaster and started over. It will be worth the wait Ron. Like you, I am waiting for all the goodies to come in too. Not long now.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, Jack. I hope I will be listening to music in the new room by Thanksgiving.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I am finding Mike's reports on his amazing new Lamm ML3s very interesting. Mike's main towers are 96dB sensitive. The Lamm ML3 outputs 32 watts.

Who can calculate how many watts an amplifier would need to output to achieve the same SPL on an 89dB sensitive speaker as Mike is achieving on his 96dB sensitive speaker with 32 watts?

My guess is 160 to 170 watts, but I am sure someone here can calculate it more precisely. Thank you!

 

[853guy]

I am finding Mike's reports on his amazing new Lamm ML3s very interesting. Mike's main towers are 96dB sensitive. The Lamm ML3 outputs 32 watts.

Who can calculate how many watts an amplifier would need to output to achieve the same SPL on an 89dB sensitive speaker as Mike is achieving on his 96dB sensitive speaker with 32 watts?

My guess is 160 to 170 watts, but I am sure someone here can calculate it more precisely. Thank you!

Hi Ron,

As a simple equation (i.e. theoretical, rather than real-world), it works out to be this:






Or, pretty much exactly as you estimated.

Best,

853guy

 

[Ron Resnick]

Perfect 853guy! Thank you very much!

So the AM Audio 833S Wavac-inspired 833 tube SET amplifier at about 150w on my speakers is very roughly equivalent to Mike's ML3s on the MM7s (putting to one side the totally different drivers of each speaker, obviously). The 833S is my pure SET solution.

Then I have my alternative and competing higher power solution: the Alieno (or the JA200 Mk. II; even though the Jadis is 170 watts I think it may output a more powerful and useful 170 watts than the 150 watts achieved by the SET 833S from riding hard a single 833 tube).

UPDATED:
And for a truly high-power, push-pull Class AB solution I am interested in the ARC Reference 750 SE monos, based on the reports of KeithR and a friend of his about the 250 SE, and on the report of a friend of mine about the Reference 750 SE (and, of course, in the VTL Siegfried Series II, and in the VAC 450 iQs as well).

I would be fascinated to compare directly the Alieno versus the JA200 Mk. II to answer this theoretical question: Does the direct output from the voltage side, and the indirect output (direct solid-state ouput) from current side, of the Alieno's 300B sound more like an SET than an all-tube, KT-150 amplifier operating in Class A? What are the sonic pros and cons of each.

I would be fascinated to compare directly the Alieno versus the high-power ARC or the VTL to answer this theoretical question: Does the direct output from the voltage side, and the indirect output (direct solid-state ouput) from current side, of the Alieno's 300B sound better, overall, than a high-power, all-tube, but push-pull amp operating in Class AB? What are the sonic pros and cons of each?

For example, do you gain more in drive and dynamics and headroom room the high power push-pull amp than you lose in transparency and presence versus the 300B semi-hybrid?

 

[microstrip]

I am finding Mike's reports on his amazing new Lamm ML3s very interesting. Mike's main towers are 96dB sensitive. The Lamm ML3 outputs 32 watts.

Who can calculate how many watts an amplifier would need to output to achieve the same SPL on an 89dB sensitive speaker as Mike is achieving on his 96dB sensitive speaker with 32 watts?

My guess is 160 to 170 watts, but I am sure someone here can calculate it more precisely. Thank you!

If you are trying to make guesses on your own speakers remember that Mike ones are point like speakers and yours are linear arrays - it is not comparable. Particularly as Mike is a near field listener and you are not. The dB scale is logarithmic in power, the errors of such calculations are usually enormous.

 

[853guy]

Hi Ron,

As a simple equation (i.e. theoretical, rather than real-world), it works out to be this:

Perfect 853guy! Thank you very much!

If you are trying to make guesses on your own speakers remember that Mike ones are point like speakers and yours are linear arrays - it is not comparable. Particularly as Mike is a near field listener and you are not. The dB scale is logarithmic in power, the errors of such calculations are usually enormous.

Hi Ron,

You're welcome.

Had I not been heading to bed I would have added caveats as Microstrip has done. Nevertheless, I fully endorse Micro's comments. The simple maths betrays the complexities of comparing two incomparable systems, and Mike's data points come after years of his system being in situ and fine tuned relative to his room. His historically-weighted real-world results are likely to be very different from yours given your system exists mostly on paper and in boxes, so as Micro says, I would personally not put too much faith in the maths at this stage.

Apologies if my post was misleading in any way.

Best,

853guy

 

[DaveyF]

Perfect 853guy! Thank you very much!

So the AM Audio 833S Wavac-inspired 833 tube SET amplifier at about 150w on my speakers is very roughly equivalent to Mike's ML3s on the MM7s (putting to one side the totally different drivers of each speaker, obviously). The 833S is my pure SET solution.

Then I have my alternative and competing higher power solution: the Alieno (or the JA200 Mk. II; even though the Jadis is 170 watts I think it may output a more powerful and useful 170 watts than the 150 watts achieved by the SET 833S from riding hard a single 833 tube).

And for a truly high-power, push-pull Class AB solution I am interested in the ARC Reference 750 SE monos, based on the reports of KeithR and a friend of his about the 250 SE, and on the report of a friend of mine about the Reference 750 SE (and, of course, in the VTL Siegfried Series II, as well).

I would be fascinated to compare directly the Alieno versus the JA200 Mk. II to answer this theoretical question: Does the direct output from the voltage side, and the indirect output (direct solid-state ouput) from current side, of the Alieno's 300B sound more like an SET than an all-tube, KT-150 amplifier operating in Class A? What are the sonic pros and cons of each.

I would be fascinated to compare directly the Alieno versus the high-power ARC or the VTL to answer this theoretical question: Does the direct output from the voltage side, and the indirect output (direct solid-state ouput) from current side, of the Alieno's 300B sound better, overall, than a high-power, all-tube, but push-pull amp operating in Class AB? What are the sonic pros and cons of each?

For example, do you gain more in drive and dynamics and headroom room the high power push-pull amp than you lose in transparency and presence versus the 300B semi-hybrid?

Ron, since you seem to be ok with discounting any heat issues from the amps under consideration, and presumably are fine with either running the AC 24/7 or sweating up a storm, then the ARC REF 750 SE should be a contender.
The amp I heard over the weekend might also well fit the bill....and IMO it sounds a lot better than the 750 SE; that amp is the Air Tight Reference 2001 in either mono version (pricey) or in the version I heard...stereo. Has plenty of output and all of the goodies that Air Tight is known for.
The fact that you can fry an egg on the top....irrelevant.

 

[Pb Blimp]

If you are trying to make guesses on your own speakers remember that Mike ones are point like speakers and yours are linear arrays - it is not comparable. Particularly as Mike is a near field listener and you are not. The dB scale is logarithmic in power, the errors of such calculations are usually enormous.

This is very true. In addition, it is extremely important in matching amps to speakers to understand the entire impedance and phase angle curve against frequency as angles above 45 degrees at points of low impedance can crush an amp that may show high power ratings but is short on current. Atkins has a nice series on these topics. A relevant quote follows:

Perhaps most important, you can predict from its impedance plot how hard the loudspeaker is for an amplifier to drive. Because a loudspeaker's impedance is reactive, the current will lag or lead the signal voltage by the phase angle [25]. In the worst case—when the phase angle is 90 degrees—the amplifier is required to source the maximum current at the same time as the signal voltage approaches zero. Simply to specify a loudspeaker as having an 8 ohm nominal impedance, therefore, can be misleading. Depending on the phase angle of the impedance, which will be different at every frequency, the loudspeaker could look to the amplifier as having a much lower impedance. However, as the late Peter Baxandall pointed out in an Audio Engineering Society presentation in 1987 [26], the maximum phase angle never occurs when the impedance has its lowest amplitude. As both are two-dimensional projections of a three-dimensional phenomenon, they're mathematically related.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/measuring-loudspeakers-part-one-page-6#8gek5GuyskEQTJ9r.99

https://www.stereophile.com/features/99/index.html

To that end Ron, I would start by looking at your speakers impedance and phase angle curve across frequencies. Look where the amp will be hit by alignment of both these (i.e., low impedance and phase angel approaching 45 degrees or more) and makes sure the amp you choose is matched for the current required. Looking at sensitivity and power ratings is a complete shot in the dark as they relate only to specific points on a dynamic continuum.

 

[Pb Blimp]

PS: With 89 db sensitivity I might have these on the list:

http://www.vac-amps.com/productPages/Statement450_IQ.html

 

[Leif S]

PS: With 89 db sensitivity I might have these on the list:

http://www.vac-amps.com/productPages/Statement450_IQ.html

As far as tube amps go I think the VAC 450 iQ's are untouchable but that just my opinion

 

[Folsom]

As far as tube amps go I think the VAC 450 iQ's are untouchable but that just my opinion

They sound very relaxing, but could stand to gain some timbre, texture, and bass control. I still prefer them over something like Spectral (heard them back and forth several times).

Leif, that's a sweet new avatar!

 

[Pb Blimp]

They sound very relaxing, but could stand to gain some timbre, texture, and bass control. I still prefer them over something like Spectral (heard them back and forth several times).

Leif, that's a sweet new avatar!

Wow, are we talking the same amps???? Stunning comment.

 

[Folsom]

Well the back to back wasn't with the IQ statements, but I've listened to the IQ multiple times including one private session. The non-IQ was better with M3's, than the IQ with VR55's - although the VR55 do bass a bit better since they're active & the M3 require being forced into bass. The same judgment remains. The only reason I'd change that opinion is if all the DAC's with them were the problem. That would be Aqua Formula, MSB Select, MSB Reference, and MSB Signature. The VAC preamp was a problem with the IQ setup, but the issues would fade away by cranking it to unpleasant volumes so you could still get the real jist.

If I were to give a difference between IQ/non it seems like the IQ goes for a more refined sound, but I'd go for the non since it sounds more life sized. Perhaps the IQ has a hair more dynamics? That would be harder to say... Overall I don't think either excel in that manner, but may be more a result of complications with texture quality.