I just got thru with another set of comparisons of the H2O S250 Sigs and my Tact 2150s. The sigs were, of course, run from the analog outputs of the TCS MK II while the Tact amps were fed from digital outputs. Both were plugged into their own PS audio Ultimate outlets which were then plugged into a single PS Audio P600 regenerator.
First up were the Tact amps. They were very smooth but after a while I felt something was missing...a bit of low level information as well a bit of drive. The sound was pretty and involving but a bit on the, well, boring side. I kept wanting the music to pick up the pace. It took me about a week to get past the pretty sound and start carping along those lines. The S250 Sigs were sitting idle.
Then I switched over to the S250s. Well the difference was immediate and obvious even without warm up. My right foot started tapping immediately. The sound was pretty as well but very, very open. And the bass, wow, the bass was like you read about, very tight, focused but well integrated with the music, providing a rather thrilling underpinning to everything.
This was a surprise as before when I sent my standard S250s back to Henry for updating I slightly preferred the Tact's using the exact same setup. Now the table were turned quite noticeably.
This tells me a couple of things. First, the DACs in the TCS are quite good and second, the Signature upgrade has turned a really good amp into a great amp.
I've not given up on the Tact amps yet as I've been feeding their digital inputs with a cheap set of Radio Shack digital interconnects because they were the only ones with the right length to reach the amps. I really need to try something a little bit more uptown. Also, several people have suggested that I do the upsampling just after the transport, then feed the TCS with that, and finally, put a Monarchy jitter reducer just before the input of each amp. Great! Just what I want, more boxes and wires. But I'm going to give it a try.
Jeff
