Jeff Rowland to what?


I currently own a Jeff Rowland 625 S2 amplifier. I'm curious as to what amplifiers I should listen to below 20K, new or used. I'm not unhappy, but I'm curious. The amp will be driving Monitor Audio PL500 II's. The preamp is a Jeff Rowland Corus.

ricred1
I would have to agree with ricred It will be very hard to beat the Monitor Audio PL 500 for what they do for the money. 

The new Heil drivers are a bit more laid back then the originals ribbons which were hyper detailed. 

Also the size of the speaker is going to create a very big sound. 

We are big fans of large speakers which help create a life like image and they do not suffer from dynamic compression.

What would be interesting would be a comparison of the Legacy Aeris which is alot like the PL 500 in terms of driver complement type and size.

I would not draw any conclusion as to Moon being a great choice because they use them at shows.

Many Canadian companies show together, and even though Monitor audio is an English brand their importer is Canadadian, add to that that Kevro the importer does not deal with any high end audio electronics lines, could explain the pairing.

Personally we never found the Moon gear to be great, kinds of sound like better Bryston, clean and a bit lean, detailed but not hyper resolving good bass.

We never found their products to be that interesting in terms of sound quality, design or technology, hence we skiped over them in our reference electronics search.

Troy and Dave
Audio Doctor
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@ricred1 

Those Monitor Audio PL500 IIs look like amazing speakers. I bet they sound fantastic with the Jeff Rowland gear. But if I was looking to try something different I would look to the Krell Solo 575.

It would be interesting to hear those speakers with that kind of power behind them.

Cheers,

Scott

Hi Richard, as many already pointed out, exceeding the performance of the amp you have without "amping up" the investment very significantly might be a tall order. As you enjoy the sound of M625 S2 but you would like more power, I warmly recommend the Rowland M725 S2 class A/B monos or the Rowland M825 stereo, or the M925 monos. Outside the Rowland World, I might look at Solution amps.... Quite expensive, but yield a musicality that also meets my sound concept.


But there is something you can do to enhance the music of your system while keeping M625 S2, Corus, and the Aeris DAC.... Last week I have installed the recently released Rowland Power Storage Unit (PSU). As I mentioned via email, this is an external full chassis power supply based on ultra-capacitors. It is designed to feed simultaneously Aeris and Corus with pure DC, and takes them off the AC mains grid. I had heard glowing third party reports on it, but I was a little skeptical... While I have not had ultra-capacitors in my system, I understood the concept, and have had battery powered pre-amplifcation before.... And the performance difference between batteries and AC was very subtle.


But when I connected PSU into the Rowland Aeris DAC I realized that batteries supplies and PSU are totally different animals... The performance enhancement is simply staggering, even on my system which I already considered wonderful, where Aeris feeds directly a pair of Rowland M925 4-chassis monoblocks into Vienna Acoustics Die Muzik. The enhancement is apparent from first activation for all audible parameters I can think of, and is followed by a rapid evolution lasting perhaps 200 hours, which pushes performance even futher.


I will soon create a dedicated thread on PSU with a lot more detail.


Guido

        

  

Guido,
As always, thanks for your input and passion regarding Jeff Rowland components. How much is the PSU?

The response to my post has got my thinking. The first thing I want to try is a new power cable for my 625 S2 amplifier. I currently use a 1m Wireworld Platinum power cable, but it's plugged into my Torus RM15 Power Conditioner. I want to try going straight into the wall, but I need a 3m cord. Any suggestions?
Guido,

You beat me to it - I was going to suggest the same thing. Here is an extensive review of the Corus/PSU by Christiaan Punter of HiFi-Advice.com, a huge aficionado of all things Jeff Rowland.

http://www.hifi-advice.com/blog/review/analog-reviews/amplifier-reviews/jeff-rowland-corus-preamplif...