Tube dampeners on ARC gear ... FREE TWEAK
By the way, Allan ... this is the Brubeck CD I referred to in the above post: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Buried-Treasures-Recorded-Live-in-Mexico-City-Paul-Desmond-Dave-Brubeck-Quar... If you like Brubeck, Desmond and Morello ... buy this one. Frank |
Nope, never tried that. I see you like the modern female jazz singers. I have all of Diana Krall's CD's. Most of my audiophile friends don't care for her, or her recordings. Too processed and too much digital reverb to suit their tastes. I like her though. I think she's a swinging piano player too. I'm more into the more traditional jazz singers like Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Wasington, Jo Stafford and Billy Holiday. If you like great female jazz singers, you might want to explore these ladies. :-) |
Wanted to report on my experience with Herbie's dampers on my VTL MB450-III power amps Having had good results with the UltraSonic Rx dampers on my phono and pre I wanted to try something on my (currently undamped) power amps. As these run pretty hot I reached out to Robert for advice -- he said the UltraSonic Rx would work even in a power amp but that some users had had better results from the (somewhat more expensive) HAL-O III dampers so I elected to go with these -- quite a lot of money for the 16 size 50 and 4 size 9 I needed Relative to the Rx the HAL-O are a little harder to use as they do not have the rubber grommets instead with a titanium to glass contact you will have to be firm to get them on At first listen they seemed a little edgy and I was wondering if the Rx would be better but as the system has settled in these dampers have brought a quite impressive change. If I could sum it up in one word it would be 'control' -- every note is now vice precise and crescendi that had previously resulted in grain and noise now are completely clean. A vocal line alongside highly modulated bass is clear and independent and on mono records (btw a great way to test the effect of these dampers) you have a much improved ability to pick apart all the elements -- one of my test tracks (don't laugh) is "Mr Sandman" by the Chordettes (this is an old Ken Kessler favorite -- give it a try, with the HAL-O IIIs you can easily discern each voice and hear all the details in the backing tracks The one downside I see is that these things are so damn revealing that the limitations in my (pretty fancy) CD front end are laid clear -- maybe some fine tuning of the filters I am using can ameliorate this, I'm currently using a wide open filter so may now be hearing some of the high frequency filter effects that had previously been masked Anyway again highly recommended |
