VAC - any comments? Good or bad.

Just a word I'm a happy Avatar owner...I purchased it used with Svetlana EL-34's as the output tubes. I'm running a pair of Green Mtn. Europa's which are tube friendly given their fairly flat impedance curve. Sounds great to me! Mid-range timbre and harmonic structure is right on, great upper end detail with no hardness. Bass is as one might expect from a monitor. If it's an indication of VAC products I wouldn't hesitate to purchase their other offerings.

Ease up on Subaruguru, guys. He's jut reporting his personal experience with product, not making a blanket indictment of the brand.

Exactly! VAC's techie admitted that the EL-34 in the original AVATAR was quite unruly, though with the relatively benign imp curve of the Parsifal Encore I expected better linearity. As I remember the deviation:
Down a couple dB in lower bass, climbing to flat at about 60Hz, continuing to climb to maybe +3dB at 100, falling to a big trough at 250-400 or so, then climbing steeply to a BIG peak of about +5dB at 4k, then dropping ike a stone to -10k at 20k. Can you say screechy horns and bloated bass?
Whereas the three ss amps (NAD, Audio Refinement Complete, Aleph P+ 2s) agreed within +/- 0.25dB (meter/eyesight noise). Again, this is NOT a blanket disparagement of all VAC products. And although I know nothing of the new version of the Avatar, is it possible that they're using a more linear, predictable output stage with a much lower output impedence? Anybody know? I really felt badly for Julien Pelchat on the other end of the line in in Quebec when I told him what this amp was doing to his careful crossover work! Why bother to sweat driver matching and all that crossover research your design rests at the whim of unruly whipsawing? After I returned the AVATAR tyo the Pass/VAC/Verity/etc dealer he DID admit that it sounded different from all other amps. Phew....

I have a pair of VAC Phi 70s.

Spec-tac-u-lar.

Listen to a really good full DSD SACD through these things (I'd recommend Jorma Kaukonen's recent release) and you'll have, well, one of "those" experiences.

Oh, and they're easy on the eyes, too.

Just can't let this one go. What were you measuring? The amp output, or the speaker output in the room? What techniques, etc. Just curious. I spoke to Kevin Hayes personally, after this came up. Kevin is honest, sincere (doesn't mean he couldn't make a klunker) and he is nonplussed by this 'measurement'. So I really don't think unexplained 'scientific' measurements are as compelling as Subaruguru might think. I would like to know more about his process. I am very curious. If someone takes a manufacturer to task, it only seems fair to publish the whole of the technique involved in the 'negative' measurements he obtained.
Also, I would say that, if the Amp measures, independently, this poorly, it SHOULD be published, and the manufacturer, scolded. I do know that the Avatar will play the THIEL 3.6, (a speaker known for its horrific load, and inefficiency)quite loudly, and according to all reports, reasonably flatly in its output.
Again, very interested, and hoping for fairness on both sides.
Larry