No, the DEQ2496 has a built in DAC as well. Just plug it into you amp
SETs and Horns
- Thread starter Al M.
- Start date
I would just like to chime in that I ignored the advice to measure my system for many years, and it was a huge mistake. You are able to learn so much about your room and speakers and crossover points this way, it's really an invaluable skill for understanding what you're hearing and being able to fix the problems.
And if the 3-400 is offputting, a calibrated mic and the REW software can do everything and will only cost $80 (https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/umik-1). The software is free to use.
It's easy to say no to such suggestions, but I don't think it's the right path if you really do want to maximize your system. At the least, I don't think proper sub integration is really possible without it.
I wasn’t planning to add a sub-woofer or tweeters, just want to maximise enjoyment from my stock Altec A7’s. Saying that, I have emailed the web sites for the products you have both suggested to my friend, an Industrial Hygienist specialist in noise/sound, who will be helping me.
Personal Opinion, I have Owned Hybrid, Push-Pull, SET & OTL. Last 28 years of my life exchanging, buying and selling. Listenings and spending time with many different brands I'm not going to talk down on here.
Overall I prefer OTL on Horns as long as the Horn Speaker matches well with the amplifier. Everything just fits into place.
OTL just feels Real, lively as if you at the event or the music is physically in the room with you the uncanny presence it portrays is totally different feeling. OTL feel slightly faster, snappy, exciting, tonal balance feels real its not sugar-coated with synthetic warmness. Music Flows in the room, Whilst on OTL the music is set to Loud it does not feel Loud or annoying or irritating. On SET Amps the music tends to feel louder than the SPL meter suggest.
At very loud volumes I Feel OTL amps feel relaxed and unstressed, I can talk over to another person in the room, Whilst On SET Amps I cant feel the same you are forced to push the volume settings back down if you want to interact with someone in the room at the same time.
I cant explain why this is so. However, this is not my deciding factor the overall detail, transparency, soundstage and the whole feeling of it being real and open in space and the flowing of the music all just adds to the experience. The soundstage on OTL Amps also feels different as to SET amps. It feels as if the Singer is moving their head towards your position if you decide to walk or move about in the room again I cant explain this feeling, one just has to experience it.
SET sounds very good too, the super high end SET Amps from Japan are one of my fav too, but toe to toe the OTL still has an edge as long as the speakers match well with the OTL.
Overall I prefer OTL on Horns as long as the Horn Speaker matches well with the amplifier. Everything just fits into place.
OTL just feels Real, lively as if you at the event or the music is physically in the room with you the uncanny presence it portrays is totally different feeling. OTL feel slightly faster, snappy, exciting, tonal balance feels real its not sugar-coated with synthetic warmness. Music Flows in the room, Whilst on OTL the music is set to Loud it does not feel Loud or annoying or irritating. On SET Amps the music tends to feel louder than the SPL meter suggest.
At very loud volumes I Feel OTL amps feel relaxed and unstressed, I can talk over to another person in the room, Whilst On SET Amps I cant feel the same you are forced to push the volume settings back down if you want to interact with someone in the room at the same time.
I cant explain why this is so. However, this is not my deciding factor the overall detail, transparency, soundstage and the whole feeling of it being real and open in space and the flowing of the music all just adds to the experience. The soundstage on OTL Amps also feels different as to SET amps. It feels as if the Singer is moving their head towards your position if you decide to walk or move about in the room again I cant explain this feeling, one just has to experience it.
SET sounds very good too, the super high end SET Amps from Japan are one of my fav too, but toe to toe the OTL still has an edge as long as the speakers match well with the OTL.
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Just Atmasphere OTL or have you tried other ones as well? I have owned Silvaweld OTLs (100 watt monos) and Transcendent Sound OTLs (built their Beast monos) and have significant experience with Graaf OTLs and some experience with Einstein OTLs. Heard Tenor OTLs at a dealer on horns and Atmasphere once in a home setting (but not on horns).
The best sounding of that group from my memory was 1) Tenor 2) Einstein, 3) Silvaweld 4) Graaf 5) Atmasphere and 6) Transcendent Sound. They all sound better than any standard PP tube or SS amp I have heard but only the Tenor, the Einstein and maybe the Silvaweld sound good enough to have a chance to dislodge my love for top class SET. The Tenor on horns was gob smackingly good...really spooky. But they have a relatively high failure rate over time so I never took the plunge with them (I guess it's the heat). The Einsteins are probably the most reliable and consistently good sounding (they were excellent with Odeon and Acapella horns). My Silvawelds, when they could hold bias correctly, were phenomenally transparent but there was a nagging sense that they lacked coherence...difficult to explain but it interferred with listening. The Graaf GM20 could rate higher but it was on non-horns in an unfamiliar setting but there was real potential there with a horn I think. Atmasphere and Transcendent sound both had that OTL spooky transparency but tonally I thought they were somewhat thin sounding...I am wondering if the Atmasphere model that uses 6C33C would fix that (all the others that I thought were amazing had that output tube).
I now know of a couple of SET companies that are making SETs with nearly the spooky transparency of OTL but with that tone and wholeness to the sound that SET brings...that is not the typical SET and especially not the Kondo/Shindo type of SET sound. Some SET lovers might not even like it because it doesn't have the same coloration that can be quite lovely.
nbv
Atma-Sphere. The novacron is not far behind Nirvana. The Novacron uses 6C3CC tubes which can be extremely hard to find. I would say Nirvana has a slight edge over it.
Atma amplifiers can be thin sounding units if they are not matched well with speakers I have noticed this many times especially if the speaker load proves to be an issue the amps tend to change their character. Once they are set up on a high sensitivity 16ohms speaker I don't find it being tonally thin-sounding anymore. They just don't work on 4 ohms regardless of the claim even when power is no issue. You need at least 8 ohms and above or a relatively flat 8ohm impedance, if the load drops at a certain frequency it does sound slightly. They are best put on speakers that match the amp well to really feel what they are capable of doing. By far they have been ultra reliable.
Iv never had the chance of hearing Tenor which built a lot of its reputation as an extremely well-sounding amplifier minus its reliability issues but these days they are building Hybrid amplifiers and have moved away from OTL, Possibly because they could never work out how to build a reliable OTL Amp.
Einstien I have heard over at a friends place during my stay in Hong Kong, Very nice amps and almost sounded like the novacron amps i once owned. They were set up on a Non-horn speaker. I would love to try them in my room on my field coils horns but at this moment just don't have any bug to move away from the current amps.
The Transcendent and silveweld never owned or heard.
Which SETs do you prefer? I have heard so many but only a few out of the bunch I ever enjoyed. I find allot of the amps lacking in transparency. My Fav Set is the 2a3 and 45 tubes and followed by the 300b. The 212 Tube is another fav of mine.
My Last SET are Line Magnetic using 212 Tubes which i had for a brief period but was sold off to an interested buyer. Nice amps, Warm, Lush and musical but it did get kinda boring having an overly warm sounding system and the dynamics were not the same as the OTL i was using and maybe its limitation in Dynamics would bug me also on most SET.
Iv owned all the Atma-Sphere Amps. Moved back and forward with OTL and SET. The Current Reference of mine is the Nirvana Amplifier From
Atma-Sphere. The novacron is not far behind Nirvana. The Novacron uses 6C3CC tubes which can be extremely hard to find. I would say Nirvana has a slight edge over it.
Atma amplifiers can be thin sounding units if they are not matched well with speakers I have noticed this many times especially if the speaker load proves to be an issue the amps tend to change their character. Once they are set up on a high sensitivity 16ohms speaker I don't find it being tonally thin-sounding anymore. They just don't work on 4 ohms regardless of the claim even when power is no issue. You need at least 8 ohms and above or a relatively flat 8ohm impedance, if the load drops at a certain frequency it does sound slightly. They are best put on speakers that match the amp well to really feel what they are capable of doing. By far they have been ultra reliable.
Iv never had the chance of hearing Tenor which built a lot of its reputation as an extremely well-sounding amplifier minus its reliability issues but these days they are building Hybrid amplifiers and have moved away from OTL, Possibly because they could never work out how to build a reliable OTL Amp.
Einstien I have heard over at a friends place during my stay in Hong Kong, Very nice amps and almost sounded like the novacron amps i once owned. They were set up on a Non-horn speaker. I would love to try them in my room on my field coils horns but at this moment just don't have any bug to move away from the current amps.
The Transcendent and silveweld never owned or heard.
Which SETs do you prefer? I have heard so many but only a few out of the bunch I ever enjoyed. I find allot of the amps lacking in transparency. My Fav Set is the 2a3 and 45 tubes and followed by the 300b. The 212 Tube is another fav of mine.
My Last SET are Line Magnetic using 212 Tubes which i had for a brief period but was sold off to an interested buyer. Nice amps, Warm, Lush and musical but it did get kinda boring having an overly warm sounding system and the dynamics were not the same as the OTL i was using and maybe its limitation in Dynamics would bug me also on most SET.
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I like the following SETs:
Aries Cerat (all models)
Amplifon SET 42 SE (haven't heard the big SET 140 monos)
KR Audio (VA350 and Kronzilla models)
NAT (older 211 versions and 805 based integrated)
Ayon (Crossfire and Spark/Helios models)
New Audio Frontiers (845 stereo and monos)
Kondo GakuOh (parallel 300B version)
WAVAC HE805
Lamm ML2 (haven't heard the flagship ML3)
I don't have much experience with really low powered SETs (those < 6 watts) because I don't have speakers that can really use them correctly. My horns are 97db and will work ok with 8 watts but you can start to hear some strain on peaks. I have DIY horns where 1-2 watts would work fine on the horn mid/high but not the mid/bass I think... haven't tried though.
Having heard some really low powered amps shine on really high efficiency speakers at some shows, I would be open to the possibility that they could sound better on that super high eff. speaker.
Out of all the SET which is would you say is very magical?
Atma-Sphere provides Chinese 6SN7 Tubes on the amps and pre-amps, IMHO these tubes provided are poor sounding and gives the Atma-Sphere that thin sound some people complain about, once these tubes are changed over that's when the real magic happens it really comes down to the tubes your using and how the setup is configured with speakers too. I don't know why they provide those crappy Chinese tubes but almost all owners have changed the tubes to better ones and some over at audio asylum have got Ralph to change the Caps to paper in oil. An audio buddy of mine preferred the Atma-Sphere amplifiers over many costly amps but in order for him to love them so much he had change the caps from Vcaps to i think Milflex.
The low powered SETs do have real magick but they must be mated with 100db at best but would recommend them for speakers over 105db to get sufficient high volumes depending on the seating position and room acoustical setup.
Atma-Sphere provides Chinese 6SN7 Tubes on the amps and pre-amps, IMHO these tubes provided are poor sounding and gives the Atma-Sphere that thin sound some people complain about, once these tubes are changed over that's when the real magic happens it really comes down to the tubes your using and how the setup is configured with speakers too. I don't know why they provide those crappy Chinese tubes but almost all owners have changed the tubes to better ones and some over at audio asylum have got Ralph to change the Caps to paper in oil. An audio buddy of mine preferred the Atma-Sphere amplifiers over many costly amps but in order for him to love them so much he had change the caps from Vcaps to i think Milflex.
The low powered SETs do have real magick but they must be mated with 100db at best but would recommend them for speakers over 105db to get sufficient high volumes depending on the seating position and room acoustical setup.
When we buy tubes we usually buy 100 at a time. Right now the Chinese 6SN7 isn't available in any quantity since the factory burned down 2 1/2 years ago. I hear they are rebuilding but production isn't expected for another year. So we've been shipping with JJ 6SN7s which I think sound a little better (should have tried them earlier) but they have a weak filament that can cause one side to not light up or it might short to the cathode. Once those are weeded out its really a pretty decent tube. But JJ can't supply them fast enough. I really don't want to go back to the Russian 6SN7s as most of them have had cathode/filament leakage issues. Probably more than you need to know...
We've never used paper and oil coupling caps. We've tested them, but so far every one that we've tested has had some electrical leakage problems- in other words they can pass a little bit of DC at their output (sort of like having a resistor in parallel with the capacitance). They don't all do it and they often don't do it right away, but since the coupling capacitor is likely to have a high DC voltage on one side of it and the bias voltage on the other, that sort of thing happening in a power amplifier will throw off the bias points, resulting in tube failure and possibly power transformer failure. IMO its not worth it. Also IMO anyone using such parts as coupling capacitors is taking a bit of a risk.
Nirvana OTL Amplifiers Playing on the Line Magnetic Field Coils,
The speakers are 105db 16ohms and the Amp is i think 140 Watts per Channel.
I am about 7 Meters away from the Speakers.
Recorded on a Iphone 12
Im further away from the speaker at this point as the table is set up right into the corner of the room. The tonearm is not properly setup here. This is playing with Classic Audio Loudspeakers which are also Field Coils and the OTL Amplifiers.
Phono Stage is a cheap Line Magnetic
Hi Ralph, I have similar experience with some of these audiophile capacitors that many users rave about. As far as I am concerned, the quality of the cap is pretty much reflected by measurable parameters. Leakage, dielectric absorption, ESR, dissipation factor, dielectric loss. I have measured some very high priced boutique caps and their quality and consistency is shockingly inadequate. I can understand that some people have noticed certain problems in their system that could be masked or somehow ameliorated by the imperfections of some of these components, but I would rather address the deficiencies and stay with components that are as near perfect in their performance as possible. That's why I have boxes of boutique caps of different brands lying around, but you will only find good ol' Wima FKP and Siemens MKY caps in my equipment. I have had one of these boutique coupling caps take out one of my almost brand new Takatsuki 300Bs.
My horns act as a magnifying glass on the quality of the coupling caps in my amps. I have tried Audio Note and Jensen copper PIO. These add what you might called "warmth", which I think rolls off the high frequencies and probably give more prominence to the mid-bass. The leading edge of transients also seems less clear. Jupiter beewax caps was a disaster. Don't use them in tube amps unless you are constantly monitoring for failure. I used Mundorf Zinc MCaps for a few years. They sounded pretty transparent, but I had to change them once or twice a year due to leakage issue causing unstable biasing and noise, as described by Ralph. Even when new, the lowest noise I could get from them was about 3mV (my amps are balanced differential). The cost adds up. If my midrange driver was not 112dB sensitive, I probably would not have noticed it. When one of them finally destroyed one of my 300Bs, I thought enough was enough. I switched to Wima FKP4 caps at a fraction of the cost. Residual noise immediately went below 1mV (I suspect the noise reflects the leakage current). They sound extremely neutral, transparent, with excellent transients. For my preamp, I have PPS caps (Polyphenylene sulfide) since I don't need very high voltage. These caps are even more stable than polypropylene at high temperature, perfect for tube amps. The downside is, the range of capacitance and voltage available is limited, and most come in an SMD form factor. My friend also offered me some Dueland caps. He rejected them because they measured too poorly. I verified the measurements and did not have the courage to put them in, and so never heard what they sound like.
Sounds nice and crystal clear to me in mids / high but lacking heft, substance and weight in the mid bass. Could be the phone recording.
I don't have any electrolytic caps anywhere in my system, even the power supplies. All film caps.
Its recorded 7 meters away from a iphone. Your not gona get much bass recording on a tiny mic built into the phone.
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