Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Frogman - Wait, this is a trick question.....

If I provided "e) all of the above" - it would have made it too easy for all you sharpshooters on the thread.
Impressive thought process !

Pegasus
We suspected already during an earlier listening sessions, that the slowly increasing amount of dry air exiting the tonearm creates - a lot! - of static charge on the vinyl surfaces. And it had a considerable effect sonically. The ionizer, building up a certain reserve of air ions (smells also a bit like Ozone), seems to eliminate this problem. Hmmm...

An interesting comment Pegasus.

I have humidity gauge right next to the TT, One foot away. The needle doesn't move during the hours I am in there. But that is maybe too macro a level....

Have you ever tried a smoke pencil puffer under the sides of the manifold to see the air stream pattern ?

1) With a still record and
2) with a record in play which is playing big bass

Good air movement is ...good :^)

now where did I put that smoke pen ....

"Smoke 'em if you got 'em"
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Pegasus
Regarding EI (there are several other "square" cores BTW) vs. toroidal transformers: Things are not that simple. While a toroidal has the advantage of a more simple "flowing" magnetic circuit, it's main "advantage" is the absence of an air gap - an economic advantage. This makes for considerably less iron for a toroidal, and more inductivity with less windings. This makes for a low (ohmic !) loss transformer, with low impedance windings.
However this creates disadvantages: The saturation of a toroidal is very sharp, and with the industry practice (and the practice of almost all audiophile transformer builders) of driving the transformers too close to the magnetic saturation point of the cores ("Efficient" ! Bling!) they are *the* achilles heel of excessive sonic mains sensitivity.
And within these issues DC on the mains (a strong disturbance of high variability) drives a toroidal transformers very easily into saturation, a massive disadvantage!
The last related disadvantage of a toroidal is the inherently lower ohmic loss: It produces (much) higher charging current spikes, which on their own magnetize the (hard limited) toroidal core much harder, and again pull away reserves from the iron core. Low loss is not per se better, on magnetic circuits it creates very audible problems.

What if;

You have two Solid State Amps Class A/B that both put out 100 wpc *** at 8 ohms and both have toroidal transformers.

Their specs look like this.

Amp A
2 - ohms - n/a
4 - ohms - 125 wpc
8 - ohms - 100 wpc ***
16- ohms - 50 wpc
32 - ohms - 25 wpc

Amp B

2 - ohms - 400 wpc
4 - ohms - 200 wpc
8 - ohms - 100 wpc ***
16- ohms - 50 wpc
32 - ohms - 25 wpc.

If both are driving full range speakers at a decent SPL level. These speakers dip to 2 ohms for the low bass requirement.

Question:

Is transformer saturation the right word to describe what is going to happen to Amp A first ?

Just asking ....

Transformer saturation is one of two main loss factors with transformers, magnetic and ohmic losses. The doubling of the power in high power amps with low impedances highlights the problem of ohmic losses. There are two questions about reducing transformer losses: Does it correlate with better sound, and at which output power levels? And which design optimisation has to take places with which compromises to reach the intended goal. Think also about the sonic qualities of single ended amps, some tube amps too with extremely good bass, but no doubling of the power to lower impedances. The optimisation of audio quality in the major signal range is important - even with considerably compressed music the main energy range is at -10 dBU rel. level, which means at one tenth the peak power. With better material it's rather around -20dB and more. In a normal listening situation one is inclined to reduce the replay level. Generally 90dB medium level, except peaks is very loud. My speakers need less than one Watt average for this. Everything that improves sound quality from zero up to this power range has a lot to do with sound quality. Doubling the power into half of the impedance would be desirable, if there were no inherent sonic compromises. I know this flies in the face of orthodox engineering, but there is some empiric and well thought through truth to it.
Reducing ohmic losses leads to an extremely high current path for the capcitor / rectifier path, with considerable problems, exacerbated by "stable, high energy" designs with huge load capacitance.
Interestingly one of the better sounding Goldmund transistor amps as well as some Cello designs did search for an *optimal*, not maximal load capacitance, with very good results.
One of the reasons is reducing the stress factor inherent in increasing charge current peaks with increased capacitance. The same design compromise is involved with low loss transformers.
There is a way of thinking (shared by some famous names) that a "transformer only provides voltage & current and has no influence on the sound whatsoever". If one starts to experiment with different (brand) transformers, one finds the opposite is true.
This has - in empirical evidence - strongly to do with the magnetic circuit, and wire diameters (and rectifier and power supply design). This is a wide - empiric - research field of patient work, which very few people have done from both sides, the producing and listening side. Most any "normal" transformer is built following general design rules, strongly economical ones, which overlook some key factors, which are relevant "only" to audio. Optics are sometimes also optimised.
It's BTW a question too, how desirable a wide bandwidth is for a power transformer, which is an inherent property of the general winding technique of toroidals.

Thanks for the reply Pegasus. I enjoy reading your posts.
My previous post was a generic example, and specific for only one type of SS situation. Although the specs I mentioned for the amps and speakers in the previous post are common in today's audiophile market place.
Something stood out to me in what you said and if I may make one more point here.

And which design optimisation has to take places with which compromises to reach the intended goal.

It has been my personal experience over the years, that in talking with about 1/2 dozen or so amplifier manufacturers and doing research on them; I discovered that they each had a target speaker design (brand and/or model) that their amplifier was based around. They have to after all hook up their amps to something right ? Amplifier makers are forthcoming usually on what speakers they are using for current testing. Likewise for speaker makers on the amps they use. Those looking for answers should give them a call directly. With this method business partner relationships are also discovered.

There are a few rules (guidelines) in audio. The rules that revolve around the speakers themselves, have a big effect on the amplifier design.
For example if we put our experiences aside and, come into this as if we were new to the hobby. Consider these three questions.
Consider each as a separate consideration onto itself. A sort of silo.

1) What if a person wants to reproduce full range music. What majority would not want this ? To hear all that was recorded.
2) What if a person wants good efficiency - again who doesn't really want this...no different than installing a furnace/air conditioner ? We check off the high efficiency box if we can. This also leads to lower utility bills, saving the planet, just make sense...
3) What if the person wants the reproducers "speakers" to take up a small area - un-obtrusive. Bookshelf size - Again if you could why not ? Who really wants 8 foot towers in their living room? Or those huge speakers that need to be disguised as huge sculptures in the dwelling to work - really ?

Well you can only have two of the three above. If someone doesn't believe it; run through the math and the scenarios of the 3 options.
If a friend asks me today for an opinion, and I know he has not already been made biased by reviews, dealers, forums, etc... I will say take your pick of the two that most appeal to you. Then look at the one that got left out. Whichever one it is - go the opposite to it in design - and if you can accept that, you're done. Your path is clear. Go find that speaker ! All choices in between are a compromise - Leading back to Pegasus' quote above.

To me the speaker is the Alpha over the amplifier. This also explains my speaker problem (multiple pairs). I see an amplifier/s as nothing more than a mechanical device that needs to gets the job done and does not break down over time. The amplifier needs to serve the speaker and allow it to make music. The order of my points above do happen to show my personal order choice. My full range speakers are 93db, and can make nice music with a small tube amp. But they are also kinda big.

Pegasus - It's BTW a question too, how desirable a wide bandwidth is for a power transformer, which is an inherent property of the general winding technique of toroidals.

@Pegasus - my personal midrange reference speakers are unique for 2015. This is because they have a design from 1957 - which is older than me. They do not follow the above rules I posted. They are fairly large, not full range, and their efficiency ? The speakers need 30 + ohms from an amp

....in order to do the proper bass and as you can see from the graph, 2-3-4 ohms for proper high frequencies.

How is that for bandwidth requirement ?

Through research and empirical means I have already found a perfect tube amp for them, for my room.

Pegasus et al

I don't think a SS amp exists that can serve them properly ? Again through empirical means the SS ones I have tried seem to choke - become so pooped out on the 30+ ohm load reqt for bass - that they seem to have nothing left to give at the requirement needed to reproduce the high frequencies. This leads to the band-aid - external tweeter.

************************************************

Audio Hangman - The Big Rocks

-----------------------Room------------------------------
---------------------/--------------------------------------
-------------------/----------------------------------------
---------------Speakers ---Source---------------------
----------------/------------------\------------------------
---------------/--------------------\-----------------------
---------Amplifier--<<<-----Pre-Amp/Phono------
-------------------------------------------------------------

I sure hope this neat doodling feature is not taken away away when the new Audiogon forums go live in two weeks. An editing feature once post goes in would help though. Sorry for any mistakes.
My previous post that said Impressive thought process !
(Should have read - Impressive thought process Frogman!)

- Ct 0517: The funny thing with ESLs, Quad etc. is that they do much better with something closer to a current source, this means they deliver much more voltage on high impedance than a low one. Doubling the power in each halving of impedance is the definition of a perfect voltage source. A voltage source gets tricked out on the voltage increase needed for the bass impedances (except if one uses insanely powerful amps). And it delivers the current in the highs (doubling, doubling, doubling the power) like a preussian soldier by executing it's order - but there is an intrinsic stress in that, of which thermal stress is not the least.
There were some highly regarded german SS amps that worked as a current source. It's a pity I never heard one or could try one.
So you listen on Quad ESL 57?