ying and yang--Lamm ML3 and darTZeel 458
- Thread starter Mike Lavigne
- Start date
yes; and you requested the volume for that as i recall. i don't listen that loud to orchestral.
Brad, I've owned a half dozen SETs and had another half dozen in my system.
spraying loads of 2nd harmonic at high powers may be pleasing to you, but its not right and certainly not SOTA. I encourage you to borrow a First Watt and hear just when your systems start distorting- I'm pretty sure it will surprise you. On my 101db speakers, the 10 watt SIT2 didn't last 93dbs in my largish room.
my own 92db speakers with a very flat 8 ohms are getting 15 watt RMS peaks easily from my Ref75SE and have hit 30dbs on very high dynamic stuff (ie. Sheffield) at higher volume levels. So when I hear you saying SETs on Thiels is cool, I beg to disagree. Also, I've recently heard Maggie 3.7s and run a consistent 60 watts per channel on McIntosh 601s whereas you have suggested folks run SETs on them too. I honestly don't get it.
Anyways, that's all I'm going to say on Mike's thread - because honestly I'm more interested in reading his thoughts in his listening room vs. someone's predilections from half way across the world.
Just one first comment, not one millisecond surely, do not try to minimize your guilt
- transients also have low frequency components.Visitors induce us in sin. There is something fascinating, even witching in listening for a few minutes at louder than real levels in a high quality system. Once when I got the visit of our Wilson distributor we played the finale of the Tchaikovsky 1802 at full power using a 400W solid state premier 350 in the XLFs - it was impressive. The full space was filled with the music, the bells sang, we felt the whole house shaking ... But it was a one time experiment, I do not consider repeating it. And when listening to classic music, sometimes the "transients" last for significant periods - I once looked at the energy versus frequency of the Shostakovitch 5th finale real time spectra and was astonished to find such long lasting high values across all the audio band.
Ked it would seem you and I are guilty as charged, that was a fun night!
Although while at dinner that night Ked did comment on Americans listening to music louder than most.
Failing to see your point Ked...
Absolutely no need to defend yourself here Mike, at all.
Ked it would seem you and I are guilty as charged, that was a fun night!
Although while at dinner that night Ked did comment on Americans listening to music louder than most.
Failing to see your point Ked...
Absolutely no need to defend yourself here Mike, at all.
Did I? I think that must have related to something else, the fact that they usually have bigger, and usually better rooms, and I suspect the walls are different in how they handle bass
Gian,
when you have a room and system that is capable (not all systems or rooms can deal with unlimited power), then I do think knowing what your system is capable of is important in judging where you want to be. it's about accessing the magic of all the music that interests you. and you don't know if you don't allow your system to breathe and the music to 'go' where it can go.
just how I see it. i sold my previous home and moved to a new home to be able to pursue this system vision. it's important to me and i put my money where my mouth is.
Well, having heard good SS and tubes on high sensitivity horns and generally finding the SS amps far inferior it seems to be more intrinsic and not level dependent...this has also helped shape my philosophy on this topic, which I have discussed many times on this forum. It becomes more obvious, not less as the sensitivity and resolving power of the system goes up in my experience. When I used low sensitivity speakers with relatively high levels of self-noise, then the speaker dominated the sound and the electronics just gave it some "flavor" a bit. If the impedance of the speaker was wild then the tube amp would start to diverge more. BUT you start putting these amps on highly transparent resolving speakers, like stats or horns and you start to hear more and more what the electronics themselves are doing...at all volume levels.
Thanks for the clarification, Mike...I just remembered you quoting a number somewhat north of 200 watts...what you say for continuous and "max continuous" makes a lot of sense to me.
The KR sounds ear bleeding on the Acoustats. It gets bright, there is no Midbass, and no stage or depth or ease or flow. Both acoustics guru and I were disappointed. The Phoenix on the other hand was so much better on the same speakers in the same room. Not sure what you far with SETs on stats or on apogees but that is a waste of good speakers and good amps. I bet if you were Indian you would have been adamant about putting masala on sushi, you seem to have the same recipe for every dish
that's a peak on a drum whack during a drum solo. i'll see that occasionally with vigorous jazz music and moderate volumes. when an amp has the headroom to do it, you get the full meal deal. most amps blunt the heck out of those. but not the 458's. it's all there and clean. it helps to have -4- 11" ceramic woofers per side only dealing with 40hz to 250hz. 97db, 7 ohm. minimal excursion, lots of driver surface, it's where the music lives and there is no crossover at 100hz to 125hz like most mid bass drivers. no smear, just music.
Nice way to try to snip off a rebuttal.. All I can say is that there was something wrong with your SIT if with a 101db speaker you couldn't get more than 93db at the listening position. I have a friend with 91db Thiels and when he had McIntosh MC501s he almost never went above 50 watts on those big blue meters...and he likes to listen very loud by my standards. I get those levels easily from my 93db Rigolettos and my 20 watt JJ-322 300B SET.
PvW makes it clear also that transistor amps don't seem to be able to swing this extra voltage on sudden transients, which then means a 10 watt SIT will run out of steam long before a 10 watt SET.
Audibility of 2nd harmonic is poor to begin with and gets poorer as the SPLs go up. 10% could very well be inaudible at over 100db.
In the pantheon of audio beliefs, promoted by audio critics selling high ticket items, one that I find peculiar is that you can "hear" higher power amplifiers sounding better than lower power amplifiers with the same topology when both operate within a power envelope that does not clip or distort either.
I have found the opposite, especially with SS amps, that when operating within the power envelope on reasonably efficient speakers that the lower power SS amps using fewer output devices sound better. I don't think I have ever heard a behemoth SS amp that I liked much, except perhaps the Nelson Pass unobtanium VFET beast based on Sony vintage VFETs at shows.
I suppose if you believe that you can hear the power even if your peak program material is modest, I suppose you can, because you can't enjoy the system otherwise.
It seems that this would be a reasonable double blind type study, but I have never heard of one being attempted.
I have found the opposite, especially with SS amps, that when operating within the power envelope on reasonably efficient speakers that the lower power SS amps using fewer output devices sound better. I don't think I have ever heard a behemoth SS amp that I liked much, except perhaps the Nelson Pass unobtanium VFET beast based on Sony vintage VFETs at shows.
I suppose if you believe that you can hear the power even if your peak program material is modest, I suppose you can, because you can't enjoy the system otherwise.
It seems that this would be a reasonable double blind type study, but I have never heard of one being attempted.
This guy says his Rigoletto sounds glorious with SS http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?49866-For-sale-Odeon-Rigoletto-horn-loaded-speakers
Hi Ron,
I’m sympathetic to your framework, since I happen to believe that certain typologies do convey certain aspects of musical reproduction in ways others cannot. That's not to say necessarily that they're superior, just that for me I think there's something each topology touches on that seems to portray aspects of musical reproduction in a unique way individually, even if they cannot always portray all aspects of musical reproduction collectively.
When I auditioned the Symphonia’s (1), I very purposely selected tracks that pushed the extremes somewhat. I am fairly agnostic when it comes to music, but find as I get older have less and less interest in the middle ground, unless the middle ground is ridiculously well-crafted, hooky pop/rock like ABBA or Bryan Adams (I remain a sucker for that stuff).
These were the tracks I selected below, and I think you may find that they’re not exactly the sort of stereotypical tracks often associated with horns, or audiophilisitc sensibilities, for that matter (2). But again, I was interested in what happened when a three-way horn of modest size was subjected to music that others frequently lament as noise (3).
Despite the Symphonia’s “puny” 8” bass driver handling low-frequency duties, I doubt I’ll ever need a sub (nor probably, have space for one). I walked away from that demo content I had found my Unicorn, and that there would be no album and no genre from which it couldn’t extract everything musically meaningful to me, including incredible low-frequency impact, texture, weight and propagation of energy consistent with the rest of the spectrum (4).
Judging a topology on its topology, rather than its implementation is likely to lead to X can't do Y summation. I go back to my oft-stated belief that when implementation is taken to its zenith, one can in fact transcend topology, even in as much as topology transcends the constituent parts.
Battles - "Atlas"
Tim Hecker - "The Piano Drop"
Fabio Perletta - "Icninen Part 1"
Arcadi Volodos - Mompou “Jeunes Filles au Jardin”
My best to you,
853guy
P.S. I'm aware that this post is not referencing the ML3/458 specifically (I've heard neither), yet hope it contributes to the dialogue that often preconceptions are only preconceptions until they're confronted and upended by real-world experience. In the hi-fi world - much like life - it's happened to me more often than not.
(1) http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-horn-speakers&p=447479&viewfull=1#post447479
(2) My posts in "What's Spinning Tonight" pretty much tear up and spit on my cred as an audiophile anyway, I'm guessing.
(3) I also got to hear Loreena McKennitt, Dire Straits, a jazz combo recorded live and Simon Preston playing Bach’s organ works.
(4) At least in rooms of moderate size, which suits those of us in Europe well.
"Notice that the ear creates significant levels
of the second harmonic, nearly 10% of the fundamental for sound pressure levels (SPL’s)
of 90dBA and above. Also the slope of the harmonic reduction versus input reduction
varies with the harmonic power, beginning at approximately 1:10 for the 3rd harmonic to
1:1 for the 9th harmonic."
"A reduced SPL range is shown. Even for the moderate S.P.L. of 80dBA, the 2nd
harmonic is at the equivalent of 65dBA or normal voice level, and the 3rd at 45dB. This is
still ~40dB above the mid-band threshold of hearing, yet one does not hear the
harmonics! Only a single pure tone is heard. The ear/brain appears to be able to
completely suppress the sound of a range of harmonics if they conform to this specific
pattern. This pattern is the aural harmonic envelope. It follows that this same mechanism
will mask harmonics arising in the sound reproduction chain if they follow this pattern. If
the harmonics do not follow this pattern, the ear brain indeed detects these as new tones.
Therefore, for all but extreme frequencies and sound pressure levels, any electronics that
generate this harmonically consonant envelope will be transparent."
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