I leave my Tacts and H2O's on all the time. However, this time last year a lightning strike did take out the midrange and tweeter ribbons of my Apogee Divas with a colossal POW. This was prior to me using the Ultimate outlets or P600. The amps were connected directly to the ribbons with no intervening passive x-over components. The H2O's can and will source a butt load of current.
I will soon get the power supply upgrade for the TCS. It's from the same guy that sold me the amps.
I did another round of listening with both OEM's amps (3 Tact and H2O Sigs, tri-amping my Apogee Studio Grands) using various power conditioning configurations. The results were similar to what I got before, that being the Tact 2150 is MUCH more sensitive to power conditioning and cords than the H2O. Plugged straight into the wall I much preferred the H2O, but like I said before, I really need to try a quality digital interconnect to be fair and any recommendations for a 2.5 to 3.0 M interconnect that's reasonable in price would be appreciated. Surprisingly the best bang for the buck by far were the high current Ultimate Outlets. They gave me basically the same improvement as going into the P600 for the H2O (which was a "moderate" improvement) and no or very little further improvement was had when that combination was plugged into the P600. So the H2O's are no longer plugged into the P600,which means I can play load as hell now....if I want to.
I had basically the same experience with plugging the Tact amps into the Ultimate outlets except the improvement was considerable, taking the amp from unacceptable to excellent. There was further improvement by plugging them into the P600 as long as the volume levels were moderate. The overall improvement was rather dramatic.
However, for each comparison the basic differences between each amp remained: While they were tonal clones of each other, the main differences were in openness,boogie and bass control with the H2O S250 Sig coming out on top. However, I DO need to feed the Tact amps a more uptown digital signal and their x-over functions are to die for if you're into bi & triamping like me.
his has been a significant finding for me as I originally prefered the Tact amps overall to the standard S250 when being fed power by the Ultimate Outlet P600 combination. If you have a standard S250, I really, really suggest you get it upgraded to the Signature configuration. This is just a flat out great amp.
Jeff
