The sound of one tube??

[KeithR]

Besides that , i think the golden years of hifi design were around 2000 : ML 33(h) 32 Wilson X series kharma exquisite avalon eidolon halcro zanden Boulder amps continuum rockport , those were daring/ innovative designs besides magico i havent seen /heard much innovation , maybe i should also mention devialet pretty innovative also
I will not even start about sources , a lot of expirienced audiophiles/producers still consider tape as being the superiour medium so regarding sources the sixties /seventies were the golden years , what a joke if you think of it
what were the golden years of rock?? also sixties/ seventies

Was saying somthing similar today---aside from some decent speaker innovation (coatings, much more inert cabs, more inhouse drivers, etc), amps and preamps haven't really done much in the past decade.

Even Artie's review of the Lamm ML2.2 said it had some positive improvement, but didn't read like it was rushing one out to make a 30k upgrade. It would have been nice if JA had compared the XP30 to the 0.2 (sp?) from a few years back as well.

 

[cjfrbw]

As far as I could understand, the designer thinks that having no output transformer is an advantage.
A good friend of mine owns the king of the transformer coupled amplifiers - the Marantz Project T-1 tube amplifier. It sounds great!

Hmm, tube rectified 300b driving transmitting tube output. Conceptually similar to my Manley neo 300b preamp driving the Wavac amps, though the Wavacs are single ended.

The schematic is blurry but it looks like two of the 845 are used as rectifiers for the amplification stage, the second pair of 845 are used push pull for amplification. That amp must sound great, but probably not too many people have heard it.

 

[microstrip]

Was saying somthing similar today---aside from some decent speaker innovation (coatings, much more inert cabs, more inhouse drivers, etc), amps and preamps haven't really done much in the past decade.

I think that there was a fundamental evolution in recent years in preamplfiers and amplifiers - some designers managed to solve the dilemma of the good specification - bad sound and vice-versa. Many of them found that some critical aspects of the power supplies that were never addressed had great importance in sound quality. The introduction of new type of semiconductors in the output stages and topologies is innovative.