Tube Amp for Martin Logan Speakers

I have been following this thread and feel it’s time to post, seeing you have now called George a troll for the second time.

George has nothing to gain from these posts, as he does not build amps or speakers, AS YOU DO! He has presented nothing but facts, and left out statements of linked reviews you presented

And as for my own experience with the Zero Autotransformer - I’ve tried them many times, and on matched amp/speaker combo’s, they are a big step backward in sound quality. They are, as George puts it, “a bandaid fix”. For people who have a mismatched amp speaker combo that cannot be driven correctly, yet have no desire to change either and fix the mismatch correctly.

They can live with what they have using the Zero, but they will then introduce another set of problems that affect the sound quality. Is it worth $1140 for a bandaid fix??????? Or should they fix the mismatch problem, that is the real question????

I'm seeing mostly some well defended differences in perspective here.

Tradeontheweb, the ZERO does not affect the sound quality as you and George suggest.

How it actually works is that many tube amps have problems on ML speakers. In such cases, they are not going to work very well. The ZERO solves that, plain and simple.

Nor is it a bandaid- it is however a problem solver and this is a classic case of the kind of problem it was designed to solve. And just FWIW, I don't make a dime when Mr. Speltz sells a set of ZEROs and he sells them to more than just customers of ours.

This thread was established to ask the question of what tube amps will be suitable for ML speakers. A few will work fine without the ZERO, but many will not, and the ZERO represents a practical solution so that any amp with enough power otherwise can do the job.

George keeps pulling the thread off-topic by suggesting that a powerful transistor amp be employed; he also said that my suggestion of the ZERO was 'stupid', and did so without any experience whatsoever with their use.

Its true that I sell amplifiers, and its also true that I have a lot of experience and feedback from people who use the ZERO. I hope its OK if I walk the talk. We can be pretty sure that George does not- he is just here so far as I can tell to derail the topic. That is one of the ways you can identify the activity of a troll.

Now if you think that I should not be posting here because I sell amplifiers, that's fine, again just FWIW audio happens to be a hobby of mine and I like it. That is the reason I am here- and I have tried my best to help out people whenever I have found that my experience was useful (I started my career in 1974 repairing consumer electronics at the local Allied Radio service facility, where I got a lot of troubleshooting experience repairing all manner of tape machines, car stereos, receivers, tuners, shortwave radios and the like- that was how I put myself through school.)

So to answer your question, In A Perfect World, of course its 'way better to start with a good match, in that way you and I totally agree. But here is a little experience tidbit for you: over the last 30 years or so of business, I have found that you can recommend that till you are blue in the face and people will still go right ahead and put an amp and speaker combo together where it is really obvious that it is not going to work, for the simple reason that they like the speaker, and they like the amp and they want both at the same time.

People wanting to put a tube amplifier on a ML ESL is an excellent example of that.

**That** is why the ZERO is handy- you can have your cake and eat it too, and it allows for excellent performance (for example the ZERO has bandwidth from 2Hz to about 2MHz, which is wider bandwidth than most amplifiers...).

Again two different perspectives on how to get a good amp/speaker match.

To me the point is zeros are the best solution for ML with many tube amps. If you match up amp and speakers directly, zeros not needed.

Perhaps an "adaptor" would be a better technical term for what the zeros are. They would make for some fairly pricy "band aids", though the argument could be made that an adapter is a technical form of "band aid". Its mostly just semantics, some more agitating to some than others.

I recently auditioned a set of Manley Snappers with my ML Aeon i's and the combo with my ModWright SWL 9.0SE sounds absolutely superb! The Snappers are 100 WPC monoblocks that run in ultralinear mode - they are very tight and detailed in the lows and highs with no boom or grain and the midrange is to die for. They pair exceptionally well with the ModWright which is a very transparent tube-hybrid design. I have a fairly small-sized listening room and the Snappers have plenty of power to drive the Aeon i's - even for demanding rock and full orchestra pieces. Depending on your listening levels, I would highly recommend the Snappers as being a great match for MLs.