Considering the New Tekton Design Encores? AND Owners Group - Experiences/Questions

Fetguy,
I don’t believe that the two approaches or mindsets are mutually exclusive by any means. We are discussing electronic devices so it’s undeniable that scientific and engineering principles are utilized and applied. I don’t disregard the necessity and importance of measurements and specifications.

My only "big picture" point is when all is said and done you simply must listen and assess your reaction to what you hear. It’s indisputable that audio equipment measurements are important, but they don’t replace (or eliminate the need) the act of actual listening experiences. You wrote "It has to be an emotional event or why bother?" Amen.
Charles

A case in point, I decided to spend the day seeing if I could match the 2005 Pass labs Single Ended Transistor sound with that of the 1995 recapped Threshols T-400. On the surface, they have a rather different sound, with the T-400 seeming dryer and less bouncy in this room. Jcarcopo once called that amp's bass "relentless".
Looking over my room correction curves, listening, and applying very tiny amounts of dsp (adjustments in the 1/100th of a db at a time) I discovered that the "dryness" was that the IGBT of the T-400 has quite a bit lower impedance at 20hz than the Pass's mosfets (relative to the rest of the spectrum) , so has a bit too much 20-40hz relative to the Pass. Thus filter errors on the room eq showed up MUCH more clearly (by ear) than on the Pass. And, yes, I got all but the difference in in presentation of dynamics between single ended and PP amps. Fun work.

Oh, hit post too soon. My next project is to see what I can get the Bryston 4BSST2 to do relative to the two class A amps.

Guys, I received my DIs just a week ago and it seems I have been listening to my entire collection since then (yes it is a large collection). I will post all the details about my setup and experiences with the DIs at another time, but right now I'd like to get more info about comparisons between DI and Encore.

I will soon be speaking to Eric about possibly upgrading to the Encores. The only thing I found a bit wanting with the DIs might be the bass response in my room (24x24x9). I improved this quite a bit by installing better wire (Nordost Flatline, yes quite old) which are decent but still not up to snuff for speakers of this caliber. So next I will upgrade the wire to something better and see what happens.  Better interconnects and power cord are in the works as well.

Meantime, if you have heard both speakers please please chime in! Thanks!
Marty