Visit to Henk van der Hoeven -- Apogee Acoustics Re-builder/Restorer

[bonzo75]

Ked is quite the aficionado of vintage gear eg WE horns
This should be right up his alley
And max WAF too

No it's not about vintage gear. I ended up liking WE accidentally, because they pissed on all the rooms at Munich (though not this year).

And DDk's trip taught me that this is possibly even more true with TTs.

Justin, so Jason Bloom restored vintage apogees?

 

[LL21]

Interesting Lloyd, the Antileon is the very amp Audiophile Bill recommended, giving the dual attributes of SS grip and power with tube like tonality
Hmm, what price s/h gets me a brace of them for bi amping?

good to know! Cost is probably 7K for second hand Antileon Signature stereo amp.

 

[Zero000]

Justin, so Jason Bloom restored vintage apogees?

No. See here.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Ked, you've heard a fair number of amp combinations on various restored Duettas, Divas, FRs, and Grands
Some stellar, some not so
Some expensive and prestigious, some fairly affordable and basic, some obvious names, some unknown to you

Can you summarise where the best synergies were, maybe where more work needed to be done, and esp those amps that had power and tone but wouldn't be a first choice because of unfamiliarity or lack of snob status label

If I truly am going to go the Divas route, I need some left field choices which really work at Real World prices to sweeten the move

Thanx in advance for help on this shopping list/early Xmas present list

 

[FrantzM]

Ked, you've heard a fair number of amp combinations on various restored Duettas, Divas, FRs, and Grands
Some stellar, some not so
Some expensive and prestigious, some fairly affordable and basic, some obvious names, some unknown to you

Can you summarise where the best synergies were, maybe where more work needed to be done, and esp those amps that had power and tone but wouldn't be a first choice because of unfamiliarity or lack of snob status label

If I truly am going to go the Divas route, I need some left field choices which really work at Real World prices to sweeten the move

Thanx in advance for help on this shopping list/early Xmas present list

spirit

Let me understand some...
You are dead set on the Diva? Yes?
If this is the case.. Get yourself a serious SS amp with serious POWER and stability. Use those Full Range on the Diva.. then take the plunge on active multi-amping (bi, tri or whatever..) Else you are setting yourself for serious frustration.
If you so like Tube put them elsewhere in the chain, Preamp, SS are transparent enough to take the character of what they are fed upfront with... DHT preamps or whatnot ... SET will move the membrane of a Diva perhaps to loud level (allow me to doubt that however...) but they (Apogees Diva) will only perform their best with powerful amp capable of great current with the kind of load they present.

From what I remember having owned Apogee Diva and having heard them at friends .. They play their best with POWER, Quality POWER... You go any other route .. you will be listening to something, anything but NOT what Divas (Apogee in general) are capable of...

 

[spiritofmusic]

Ok Frantz I get that, I'm getting that
Better late in the day than never
My audio journey went in a particular way when I discovered Zu with its SET friendly/full range/tone dense presentation.
This inevitably led me a few years later to investigate SETs, and the circle was complete
The move to NAT cemented a muscular tubes presentation, tone AND grip, and subsequent tinkering with Duelund caps and Lundahls silver transformers to the Zu sub amps, and gilding the lily with Sablon Reserva PCs with US plugs and Furutech US sockets cemented a sound I could only dream of at the start of my journey

So, here I am very happy to stay for life in the NATs/Zus fold, but catching this Apogee chatter, and hearing from those who use them that the experience is a level beyond the norm

But contemplating Divas means throwing out what I love about my current state of affairs, hence my in retrospect probably naïve thought that I could combine the best of SETs with Apogee

I'm due to hear a well sorted Graz Divas set up at Henk soon
If the experience appears to get me one step closer to God, and the compulsion to own them becomes irreversible, well then SETs will have to go
Agree that tubes in phono, dac, preamp would be the way to get some sort of middle way on tube flavour in a megaWatts Divas setup

I would be interested in seeing what left field candidates for big beastie, high current, high damping factor Class A SS are out there, providing power with a darker tonal character, tone dense to try and emulate the character of good triodes
Tone AND grip please, at a reasonable price tag

 

[Zero000]

http://www.apogeeacoustics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=735

Ked won't accept that these amps are excellent. But they are. Seriously so. They just don't cost enough. LOL.

It is a real shame Ked missed my A21. He'd eat his words. It is astonishing with a tube front end on Duettas. Really. I was using an EAR868PL pre at the time and an MF Tri-Vista SACD.

 

[bonzo75]

Marc,

I already answered that question. For me the speaker matters more. I liked henk's speakers with plinius, and TSW with TRL. I am sure some of the other amps on other apogees I heard were better SS amps.

I am not too worried as this is easy to sort out. You can easily dem transmitters, ayon/CJ for valves, and MSB, thrax hybrids, Burmester, Aesthetix hybrids, and such all in the UK. Knowing me, I will end up liking more than one amp and end up doing a merry go round till I find a good one that I can get at a decent price and then modded.

I would like to beat the sh*t out of some uber priced amps. It's worked on digital and speakers, it seems to work with analog, so why not with amps?

On the pre, I think I will say one of ypsilon and magnetostat will be my final choice.

 

[Zero000]

There are only two problems with an A21. Subjectively, its performance is so high, you might feel you are being assaulted. It is a real Lambo/Ferrari of an amp in performance terms, and so dynamic there is a good chance it will do your nut in.

It will blow an Aesthetix Atlas to high heaven/out of the water on an Apogee, I believe, having heard that amp on some Sonus Fabers.

Also, the DF is so high, it can sound like it has too much bass grip.

 

[gilles13]

My 2 cents. Around 1991 I bought my caliper signature and was waiting for my DR9 classe audio. So I tried a cyrus two with its big power supply PSX,the med tw ribon was working perfectly but there was absolutly no bass. It was then solved by the arrival of the DR9.

 

[Zero000]

The Parasound A21 left me, a hi-fi reviewer, and a loudspeaker designer absolutely speechless the first time we heard it.

The chap I sold my ML Ascents and Descent to was determined to build his own Apogees after hearing it. I'm not sure if he ever did...

 

[henk]

Marc,

I liked henk's speakers with plinius

Next time I'll hook up the STAXes. Almost infinite power (about 1400 W/channel at 4 ohms) and a much better amp than the pliniusses

That's why I'm using the STAXes running my midrange ribbons from about 300 Hz to 8 Khz.... Who cares if the Pliniusses sound "dark" when they don't have to deliver anything above 400 Hz

And the STAXes sound waaaaayyy better than stock to boot, after the necessary tweaks.

 

[Zero000]

Was reading a list of Apogee approved amps for the Diva in 1988. In it was the Denon POA 6600. Tried a pair and it is absolutely dreadful.

Another review claims use low resistance speaker cables or you can lose up to 15% of your amp's power. Not seen that one before but might be worthy of some consideration if using tube amps.

 

[henk]

Was reading a list of Apogee approved amps for the Diva in 1988. In it was the Denon POA 6600. Tried a pair and it is absolutely dreadful.

Another review claims use low resistance speaker cables or you can lose up to 15% of your amp's power. Not seen that one before but might be worthy of some consideration if using tube amps.

The only way not to lose 15% amp power is to use an active filter and use multiple amps. The resistance of any speaker level filter is simply too high... And it also destroys your damping factor: All apogees use air core coils, which have a DC resistance of at least 0.2 ohms. Which means your damping factor will be down to a maximum of 20, no matter what the damping factor of your amp.

 

[microstrip]

There are only two problems with an A21. Subjectively, its performance is so high, you might feel you are being assaulted. It is a real Lambo/Ferrari of an amp in performance terms, and so dynamic there is a good chance it will do your nut in.

It will blow an Aesthetix Atlas to high heaven/out of the water on an Apogee, I believe, having heard that amp on some Sonus Fabers.

Also, the DF is so high, it can sound like it has too much bass grip.

Interesting. Some time ago I could not resist to get a cheap used Parasound dual mono HCA 3500, in order to have it modified according to John Curl advice, but the work it still in the waiting line. I was told it would be a real Soundlab driver. I tried it non-modified and although a decent performer - great bass and powerful - it was nothing too special. As far as I know the A21 already includes all the modifications.

 

[bonzo75]

The only way not to lose 15% amp power is to use an active filter and use multiple amps. The resistance of any speaker level filter is simply too high... And it also destroys your damping factor: All apogees use air core coils, which have a DC resistance of at least 0.2 ohms. Which means your damping factor will be down to a maximum of 20, no matter what the damping factor of your amp.

Hi what does this mean? That if I get a damping factor of 100 or 500, it will be down to 20? So after a certain level, the DF is pointless?

 

[microstrip]

Hi what does this mean? That if I get a damping factor of 100 or 500, it will be down to 20? So after a certain level, the DF is pointless?

Perhaps not exactly these values, but yes, it has been pointed many times that ultra low damping factors are just a marketing issue ...

 

[spiritofmusic]

Ked, I guess I was just hoping for a summary of those left field choices you might have heard that worked, wouldn't break the bank, yet aren't household names
I seem to recall Project Sphinx being mentioned, never heard of that one before. Plinius more familiar, but again I wouldn't necessarily have come up with that choice on my own

I wonder if top quality Class D would sound good on Apogees?
The new Taiko Kodo Class D monos were driving Vivid Giya G1's effortlessly in a vast 40x50x20 space at the SGM server launch at Munich this year, I believe 700W into 2 Ohms

 

[henk]

Hi what does this mean? That if I get a damping factor of 100 or 500, it will be down to 20? So after a certain level, the DF is pointless?

The damping factor is simply the ratio between the resistance of the driver and the resistance of the rest of the circuit.

In practice, the resistance of an apogee driver, it being a bass, a midrange or a tweeter is somewhere between 0.1 ohm (the scintilla midrange) to about 3 ohms (diva bass, duetta bass etc)

The resistance of the rest of the circuit is made up of the sum of the amplifier resistance (usually < 0.05 ohm for an ss amp) and the filter resistance, because both of these are in series with the driver.

So the lower the resistance of the filter, the higher the damping factor will be. Simply because the speaker filter has a higher resistance than the amplifier. So the published damping factor of the amplifier is usually quite meaningless.....

It gets even worse: At the cross-over frequency between two drivers, for instance the bass and midrange, the filter resistance is equal to the resistance of the separate drivers, so here your damping factor is equal to 1.0

This alone is a good reason to go active bi-amping

 

[bonzo75]

I wouldn't do class D unless you get a crown amp for 500 and want to use it to run the system while you dem and decide