Tekton Double Impacts

David,
Here's a vivid example of listeners hearing the same system and recordings in real time and having very contrasting impressions. 

At CES in the late 1990s I attended a demonstration rearranged by Dr. Keith Johnson playing some of his HDCD Reference recordings.  The system was all Spectral electronics driving Avalon speakers. He allowed me to summit one of my CDs to play.

Boy was I disappointed,  very lean, dry and clinical sound.  A friend with me whispered to me "sterile". The Reference recordings played by Dr. Johnson had the same clinical sound in this system.  Yet other listeners in the room felt the sound quality was nothing short of superb and they really raved about it. A very  stark contrast to what my friend and I heard.
Charles 

Oh David, I envy your food world in the big easy. Never have I tasted so many delicious dishes while visiting there. Add that to the great music, festive atmosphere, interesting architecture and history and I'll be sure to visit again. 

Music and cuisine are quite similar, they both combine science and art to appease our senses. 

Tough rooster though? It better be braised in lots of burgundy! 🍷🐓

Thanks corelli, Aric really came through with the new upgraded chassis. They're not only better looking but are much more substantial and sturdy. And yes, most importantly they sound exceedingly good. 

Hey guys, I just wanted to chime in and let you know that a couple of new products have been added to the site using the new chassis and I'll have more to follow including a Push-Pull triode mode/UL mode amp using el34,kt88,120's and 150's. The standard offerings can also be built into the new chassis for an upcharge that simply covers the cost of the chassis and/or transformer covers (if desired). You can contact me through my site or PM if interested. I also wanted to say thank you Tom for the kudos man! Best wishes, Aric

David_Ten 1-21-2018
I don’t see how a component can somehow ’change it’s spots’ for lack of a better phrase.

Mac48025 1-22-2018
Just to clarify the MZ sounded amazing with my Aric KT 120 amp. It was full of life, energy, speed and dynamics. For some reason when paired with Aric’s 300B it lacked all of those qualites and sounded anemic to me. Your description of anemic matched what I was trying to convey Charles. I thought it was the amp at first and was quite disappointed. Aric suggested that I connect the 300B directly to my DAC and sure enough the 300B came back to life. When Aric’s linestage arrived a few days later it sounded glorious with the 300B....

... To me it’s both a matter of a real drop off in sound and what ones preference in sound is.

While I don’t profess to having a good understanding of the novel ZOTL output circuit which provides a transformer-like impedance transformation without using an audio transformer, it wouldn’t surprise me if the MZ2 does indeed "change its spots" significantly depending on the components it is being used with, and more specifically on the signal levels it is processing and the load impedance it is driving. For example, if the KT120 amp Tom used had higher gain than his and Charles’ 300B amps the 6SN7 output tube in the MZ2 would have been operating at higher signal levels in the latter cases, conceivably resulting in adverse effects on linearity and distortion.

In any event, I suspect that Tom’s last sentence I quoted above pretty much says it all.

Also, BTW, an experiment those using the MZ2 as a preamp may wish to consider doing would be to connect a resistor of say 4 or 8 or 16 ohms, rated to handle 2 watts or more, across the MZ2’s speaker terminals for each channel. I would imagine that would result in a significantly different sonic character compared to simply loading the MZ2’s output circuit with the vastly higher input impedance of a power amp, although I wouldn’t want to speculate as to whether the resulting difference would be for the better or for the worse.

Best regards,
-- Al