I listen to classical orchestral music at heavy volume. I detest reproduced music for always sounding more or less electronic and not acoustic. Real music is beautiful in a way reproduced music--so far at least-- never is. I have become curious about Wyred4sound amps because of low price and high watts. I am wondering if any of you "mostly classical" listeners have heard these amps and feel they do no more damage to music than amps which are NOT ICE amps. I am using a Plinius SA100 now and have used a VAC 100/100, a Bedini Classic 100/100, a Music Reference RM-9, and other tube and solid state amps. They all had their pluses and minuses, of course, but for least electronic, clearly the Bedini was the winner. So what about ICE amps?
"For driving class D amps, I have preferred SS Roland Capri ... over my tubed ARC Ref 3."
Hello Guido,
I also owned Roland Capri but after purchasing Spectron Musician 3 amps I got Joule-Electra LA-300ME line stage and this combination is much, much better then that with Capri. Try this preamp with your Roland 312 and you will be literally shocked how MUSICAL it will sound.
Thank you Michael, Joule-Electra has an excellent reputation and the matching with Spectron comes highly recommended by Simon Thacher. I experienced a similar performance leap migrating from Capri to the Rowland Criterion reference pre for feeding the Rowland 312. It is probably an issue of consistent voicing across the product line, as much as it is the degree of isolation of the power supply, the type of transformer coupling of inputs and outputs that pretty well avoids any impedance mismatch, and I could go on waxing poetic on technical detail. . . . Lots of paths to Nirvana, isn't it? G.
The nuforce looks like it would be a little weak ( power wise) for an 1 ohm ribbon or planer type speaker.
Not saying it can't but it would appear 500 @ 1 is about what is needed for good dynamics.
Specifications:
* Configuration: Mono Input: RCA and true balance XLR * Power output (see Power FAQ) Ref 9 V3 / Ref 9 V3SE
Power/Load 8 ohm 4 ohm 2 ohm Peak Power ) 325W 650W 1300W (20 msec) RMS Power 175W 335W 335W
*RMS power denotes maximum continuous power. Peak power denotes an instantaneous power boost. Note that typical listening normally requires about 15W of power. These high power amplifiers provide more than sufficient power for just about any speakers on the market.
***************
Interesting to hear of other recommended brands , so far we have .
From the Rowland side you can likely add: Model 501 monos + twin PC-1 rectifiers, Continuum 500 integrated, Model 312 stereo, Model 301 monos. 301 Yields 90Amps peak per chassis. . . Other models half as much. 501s works best front-ended by PC-1, because it does not incorporate PFC in the power supply regulation.
Worth pointing out that most manufacturers are a somewhat conservative lot, and may not admit support for 1 Ohm loads in product literature. . . usual caveat emptor I guess. G.
Well we did get the chance to compare the Bel Canto to the Threshold tonight and the Threshold won hands down. Very unusual in Hi-fi to get a consensus, so we had one of those rare moments....
CD Player: Sony Pre-amp : ARC - SS Speakers : Maggies 1.6 with stands Group : 5 Hi nutters
The Bel Canto had a very immediate and powerful presentation , but the sound was harsh and hard sounding by comparison , say analog vs digital. There was more openness in the upper ranges, more apparent space, but at the expenses of finesse and many felt there was an unnaturalness about it and the Bass was horrible by comparison.
The Threshold at first sounded a bit Laid back, but proper , the more you listened, the more it sounded right , attack was there when called for , instruments etc were in a better perspective in size and placement , much better dynamics without sounding shrill , very pleasant and musical sounding where the Bel canto was hard and brittle , the threshold also presented the recording with a emotive (no pun intended)that appeared just right ...
I can't defend the Bel Canto, since I haven't heard one. However, as a long time owner of an ICE amp, I have come to dome definite conclusions. It took years of experimentation.
On my system the Sony would sound terrible. Then again, way before I went class D, and was using Pass gear, NOS players were winners hands down. So, I was an early convert. Now, with the gear I have, the difference only intensifies, remarkably.
The difference lies in several areas. An excellent Sony SACD sound exhibited a severely truncated decay. The stage was both shallow and squished. The tone was cold and tinny. In fact you describe it rather well.
My sound is fully fleshed out. The stage is bigger than my 5 foot speakers. I could go on, but it is just as well to say my sound follows nature. It is a natural sound, in all venues, hard rock, to lizard lounge singers.
These are .8 ohm speakers, with sensitivity at 76 db. Despite that, when I put on a well recorded pianist, I put his grand piano right in the room, turning the volume to 2 o'clock. It is fun to fake out passer-bys.
Weseixas, which Bel Canto monos did you try? . . . Ref 1000, Ref 1000M(same as Ref 1000 Mk.2), Ref 500M?
Did the Bel Canto have at least 1000 hours of music to its credit? ICEpower amps require an inordinate breakin time, while your vintage Threshold is of course fully broken in.
Did you leave the BC to play in the background for several hours prior to evaluation? ICREpower amps take about 24 hours to yield their best after powerup. Â
Not all BEl Cantos may work equally well with the tube pre-amp. A bad match here might account for what was heard.
Also, I believe power supply implementations are different in different BC models and could make a difference.
I can say for certain that the BC ref1000m's in my system do not match Weseixas' description.
Never heard the Threshold so cannot compare to that. I'm sure it is a fine amp in of itself as well from what I do know.
Different amps do sound different, even under optimal circumstances, so not all will take to any in particular the same even if everything is set up to integrate perfectly.
The choice for an NOS or upsampling D/A Converter is purely subjective and a personal choice contrary to a previous post which is erroneous and disingenuous as well.
Some folks prefer NOS while others prefer upsampling; it's vanilla or chocolate. Neither is right or wrong.
The amplifier with regards to your choice of D/A Converters is, of course, irrelevant.
Also incorrect is the "whispiest insulated speaker cable" advice. Choose the speaker cable that suits your ears and system. It's that simple.
1. The Bel canto was not mine and is well broken in , it has been in this system for more than a yr and replaced a Krell KSA 250 .
2. It was being driven by an ARC - SS not tubes ..
3. The difference was not maybe, let's try again , it was night and day , the Bel Canto had a very hard sound by comparison to the threshold. The opinions i had voiced previously were shared by all including the owner of the bel canto .
4. I would believe those that do not hear this hardness may have speakers that are not very revealing in the upper registers and if so , then i can see very good mating with the Bel canto.
5. The bass was hands down better on the Threshold , the Bel Canto bass was muddy and never had the extension.
6. As i had said previously , the Bel canto was more extended on the top and was more open , but we all felt it did so at the expense of sounding very grainy and hard by comparison. The more one listened , the less you were inclined to go back....
Again very unusual everyone in the room came to the same conclusion , 3 off the 5, own class-d , i can state without reservation "we" never expected this result , well not such an unanimous decision .
Audiofefeil, Upsampling, perhaps. Oversampling NO. I have proved that here many times to various people to their satisfaction. Class D is nothing like any tube or solid state amp;
Every cable that has gone through here have announced themselves according to their insulation regardless of price. They produce a haze of white noise on a fine Class D system.
These are not a matter of choice for class D owners. They are a matter of realistic sound versus poor hifi, as the Weseixas test with Sony exemplified.
I stand by my words, and your countering does no good to those who choose class D amps.
Bill, inadvertently you have used a term that can be interpreted as a remark "ad hominem".. .
From the American heritage Dictionary: 1. disingenuous. adjective. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: "an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who ... exemplified ... the most disagreeable traits of his time" (David Cannadine).
I am of course positive you did not mean any of it. I am sure you agree that we should maintain the most urbane level of discourse on this board.
Thank you Weseixas, could you post the exact system configuration you used in the test, including cabling/PCs complement? If you already have, my apologies.
How long had the 2 amplifiers been warmed up before being inserted into the active/live audio chain?
I am not trying to dispute your opinions. . . just hoping to get complete context, so your findings gain greater applicability. G.
Is it possible the BC was revealing something in the source if the high end sounded "grainy"? Just speculating. I do not hear anything resembling grainy in my setup.
More info on what was listened to and SOn source model, ICs, etc. would add some context as GC suggests.
Muddy bass? That baffles me. Having owned Maggies prior, I'm wondering if the BC is exposing anything there? Bass dynamics on Maggies are a lot different than what I am running these days.
My house is wired with commercial grade 4 conductor moderate gauge copper stranded and vinyl shielded speaker wire, nothing fancy, and performance even with that is fine, though perhaps not quite as open and extended as the Audioquest cv6 SCs I run to one pair in the same room as the electronics.
FWIW I think the 500m uses a newer generation ICE module than the 1000m and some have indicated the sound to be noticeable different so comparisons with the 1000M may not be totally apples/apples.
Mapman, you are correct of course, the sound of Ref 500M appears to differ from Reff 1000M to some extent. Yet, I am not sure if the reason is simply the different series of power conversion module, or it's a mix of design, module series characteristics, and power rating. G.
Rx8man, select audio dealers, occasionally prone to the odd personal barb or 2, sometimes may want to dust off the old Dale Carnegie paperback on "Zen, and the art of friends maintenance" or something vaguely to that effect. G.
If I understand correctly, most ICE modules are stand alone amps that produce no noticeable heat, and are very good performers, are used for mass audio product lines.
B&O ICE are constantly improving their on board switching power supply. The later modules like the ones Bel Canto use are better than before.
The only module they make that allows an add on power supply remains the one in the H2O amps I am using, being the 500A. This is a 250 watt amp. The analog power supply imbues the resultant sound with a relaxed authority that allows the use of solid state preamps, There is no need for tube massaging.
Note the bass was muddy and unextended on the BC vs The threshold , The muddy bass noted to maggies previously disappeared and the bass was vastly improved .
Note : Improved over previous BC500 sound , not perfect ..
The M500's are never turned off , haven't for a year always left on, Per BC instructions. The threshold was allowed 10 minutes , we never waited the difference was apparent immediately during the warm up phase and got better so we just kept going.
Count it, that in this situation, with the combination that was presented, the Threshold delivered. Again, i can see it being some what different on less revealing speakers with the noted exception of the Bass, the BC500 was not even in the same time zone here.
Weseixas What Rich are we talking about? I will be very happy to entertain any visitor who loves music. Have him shoot me an email.
I removed my system from Audiogon. After my spinal operation this month, and trusting I will be in good health afterwards, I am going to restart my cottage industry making speaker cables. Doing that, I figure I will have to register as such. My system dialogue was riddled with brand name disappointments.
Gallant Diva's set up is very different than mine. I have good word that his sound is phenomenal. He put a lot of tube amp horsepower into driving hybrid Full Range Apogees.
Check out my system listing for complete info. It is up to date I believe. Pics on speaker location within rooms could use an update and I need to add pics of the BC monoblocks still.
I'm happy to answer any specific questions you might have.
Weseixas, thank you so much for the additional information. Anything you can tell us about wiring, XLR vs RCA, and the rest of the system's electronics?
"Note : (Bass) Improved over previous BC500 sound , not perfect .."
Have you ever had "perfect" bass in the listening room for reference?
This brings two things to mind.
1) bass is highly sensitive to speaker placement in room and room acoustics even with the best equipement
2) I had to adjust my speaker location somewhat when I switched in the BC amps. I find that switching amps in general typically involves at least some minor tweaking of speaker location within the room to retain best results.
I bought my BCs used and was not sure about break-in amount prior. At first, the sound was stark and bare sounding in comparison to my prior amp, a Musical Fidelity A3CR (Stereophile Class A FWIW). After a while, things settled in to a new and better reality. Part of this was my ears adjusting to the new sound, which was much tighter and cleaner and dynamic top to bottom still with very good detail. I attribute the different sound of the BCs somewhat to high damping factor (>1000 I believe is the spec). High damping is generally considered a desirable thing for my OHM speakers with the Walsh drivers. High Damping may not be the case with planars like Maggies.
I say that based partially on technical intuition but also on the fact that when I owned Maggies they worked well with a 360 w/ch carver m4.0t amp (low damping and current) whereas I had to dump the Carver to get balanced sound out of the newer OHMs.
One more note that believe the thing about the BCs that made me adjust speaker location was the deeper and consequently larger soundstage that the BC produced. The speakers needed additional room to breath and do imaging freely as a result.
It strikes me that in a tight room or in a case where the big soundstage the BCs are capable of delivering is constrained, that muddy bass and a general blurring of sound overall could be possible. The solution would be to work with speaker placement and in some cases perhaps additional room treatments, etc.
I may know what happened with the Weseixas shoot-out. This is far-fetched, but maybe he just did not like the Bel Canto amplifier? It seems at least plausible.
"This is far-fetched, but maybe he just did not like the Bel Canto amplifier?"
Of course that is always possible.
But, to achieve best results, first it would be beneficial to make sure things are set up well to enable a comparison of what each piece is capable of, rather than what each piece just happened to deliver.
I know what the Bel canto ref100mkii is capable of with proper setup because I have been through setting it up. I also believe that without the proper setup, teh results could be quite unimpressive.
Exceptional things usually require some special preparation in order to receive the benefit. That is definitely the case with the BC amps based on my experience.
I've never heard the Threshold, which I am certain is a fine and surely different sounding amp as well, so I cannot offer anything there.
Mapman are you suggesting the sound stage on the BC is so wide and vast , it made the bass less define and less extended vs the Threshold, because it needs more room.
What if the threshold sounds better in a smaller room , should we have moved the speakers to a smaller room to compare the sound... LOL
Guys,
I'm not saying the threshold is better than the BC, I'm saying in this setup were the BC500 lives, it did a better job.
The BC500 had a bigger sound and had more information in the upper registers , but it did so at the expense of sounding hard and unmusical by comparison, even the tonal balance was off , noted especially on Pianos.
This was the unanimous decision of all in the room ncluding the owner of the BC.
Again the Maggies are very revealing in the upper registers and on a different type speaker the results could have been different. I would suspect limited bandwidth speakers to sound better on the BC for sure .
I'm having an S500 modified and updated, maybe I will drop it off at Muralman's when in NC and have him write the next A/B review and take the heat on this ...LOL -)
05-03-10: Rtn1 I may know what happened with the Weseixas shoot-out. This is far-fetched, but maybe he just did not like the Bel Canto amplifier? It seems at least plausible.
I'll just note that I do not hear those things in my setup which is different and leave it at that.
I am wondering, tonality aside, how was the sound stage and imaging with the BC in the setup you heard?
If that was big yet still focused, then it was as should be.
If not, then I would say all bets are off in regards to overall sound quality, including tonality.
Also piano would sound different on Maggies than on anything in my system even under ideal circumstances, so I would not attempt to draw any conclusions based on that alone.
All joking aside, if the Bel Canto can handle 1 ohm, then by all means, drop by with it someday. As an aside, you can make it a marvelous vacation. Visit the lovely abundance of wineries, check out the still largely wild north coast, visit John Kenneth Galbraith's favorite city, San Francisco.
Can you confirm the damping factor spec of the Threshold amp?
As I mentioned prior, I'm suspicious of the high damping factor (>1000) of the Bel Canto perhaps not being a good match for Maggies, but that is just my technical intuition talking.
I'm wondering if anybody else has any observations regarding amp damping factor and how to match that to the Maggies?
I was suggesting for you to host the next shootout , threshold vs the H2O. 2 members of our group lives in NC..
If not, i understand and can just Listen -)
Mapman,
I'm still not sure what you are suggesting . what does the maggies and piano have to do with my statement.
My statement is of such :
"Pianos sounded better on the threshold , especially the tonal balance vs the BC."
This was the consensus of all present not just mine including the owner of the system, it's his " maggies" and BC.
Nothing like A/B testing to put things back in perspective of course and not noted, none of this was optimized for the Threshold, we used what he had optimized for his BC setup , speaker leads, interconnects and his ARC -pre ( SS)
I would have liked to have tried his BC in my system , but BC advised against it and the threshold barely got warm on his , I let them rest on mine after 40 mins.
This comparison came about because my friend was very impressed with my sound with the Thresholds and was thinking of upgrading his maggies for the 1.7 .
So we did the amp thing as i wanted to know if CLass-d was the way to go and he did say the BC destroyed his Krell, so we were all curious.
I left him with the threshold , the saga continues ...this is all fun , if you open the mind and enjoy..
"Pianos sounded better on the threshold , especially the tonal balance vs the BC."
I was just relating that having never heard either amp with Maggies, which have atotally different sound from anything I am running currently with the Ref10000mkii, I have no basis to assess what it would sound like other than what you relate.
Also, having never heard a BC with Maggies, I am not certain going in that Class D amps would be my first choice with those either, but would be curious to hear the combo and know for sure.
Ah, Weseixas, the mystery continues, just who you are. I would be extremely excited to host a shoot out of the Threshold against the H2O. While we are at it, we can test any number of SCs for laughs. Nothing would please me more.
We will have to make a date - We will plan on a day, after my C 4-5 spinal path is cleared this month. Shoot me an email
One thought that occurred to me is that I consider both Magneplanar and IcePower to be way towards the low fatigue factor end of the spectrum. I would expect the combo of these two tehnologies to be the same.
That might be considered a good thing to some or too laid back and uninvolving to others, depending on personal preferences and such.
Also a touch of tube warmth somewhere up front of the amp might be another good ingredient to toss into the Class D amp soup, again depending on the nature of the system as a whole and listening preference.
I owned a Sony CD player not too long ago. The combo of the Sony sound, IcePower, and Maggies seems like one that I might expect to perhaps be somewhat towards the cold and thin end of the spectrum and perhaps could benefit from a bit more warmth somewhere in the signal chain.
The thing I would worry about with ICE amps is the massive amount of EMI/RF they throw off. I believe that would be a particular problem with Maggies (which I listen to as well). Am I wrong about either the ICE amps producing EMI/RF or about their effect on system components?
"Am I wrong about either the ICE amps producing EMI/RF or about their effect on system components?"
This is something I was concerned with going in.
Yes, there is potential and it needs to be suppressed. Newer designs, including Bel Canto's, seem to do it effectively. I read it was more of a problem with some early units. It's not been an issue in my setup, which even includes a low out MC phono setup and tuner.
The ref1000mkii is dead quiet. I detect no background or any other audible noise.
EMI/RF would not effect speakers directly I believe, rather other low level eletronics and/or the power supply which would then affect the sound heard via speakers.
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