Charles1/Joeinid.
Thank you. I am very pleased, and relieved that I am this happy with the sound. I listened more last evening. The new ’Black Breath’ album was included.. For any listeners who enjoy heavy music, trust me, give this album a listen. It is dark, heavy, recorded beautifully, and is their best release yet. Sounded excellent at LOW volumes. Jeez I forgot, the best reward of all, and I need not exaggerate, the amp still sounds dynamic and involving at very low listening volumes. If you read above, that was one of the main goals I switched everything up, in order to achieve. Did some more gentle listening to a few contemporary jazz pieces as well. Sounds great. The horns REALLY sound amazing.
I am excited that there is even more potential to be unveiled, not that I honestly feel any ’needs improvement’ areas. Burn in of tubes, and an upgrade in my phono should inevitably do this however. I may even roll the 12AX7’s sooner than later. NOS mullards or something perhaps.. I wouldn’t waste my time doing it, unless if I bought tubes that would REALLY be worth my time.
Just a side note, I decided to try running my SVS in sealed mode last night as well. Never have since ownership. Plugged the three ports, and set the tuning mode to sealed. I was listening at very low volumes, with my wife in bed down the hall, but I could hear the tightening of the bass at this volume, so I look forward to trying it at louder volume today, to see what I think. I have the cornwalls handling the majority of the bass, and I think theyre doing a wonderful job of this, so the sub is basically in the mix for just the very low registers of bass, and extra oomph with the kick pedal, or extra body added to the upright bass etc etc. Ill probably mess around with this a bit furthermore.
Side note.. It is funny. After doing a hands on swap in my own home, with my own equipment, swapping just ONE component, and hearing SUCH a huge difference in sound quality on every level, I have to laugh at some of the philosophies I have read recently. In particular, some of the nonsense spewed by Harbeth’s Alan Shaw regarding how no amps should be showing sonic differences from another. Im not quoting him no, so don’t hold be accountable, but to summarize his statements, what I’ve just said suits them perfectly.
He does not state this in an ’in a perfect world all amps should sound the same and reproduce the natural signal fed to them and that is all’, but rather in the terms of that, today, if you are to compare two amps, being it as vastly difference as my comparison was or less, they will sound no different. He receives plenty of bashing for his BS statements like these, and I can now attest myself to how very different in sound an amplifier is capable of. It is as if I changed half of my components, and not just one.
