Tekton Double Impacts

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

"Listeners hearing the same system and recordings in real time and having very contrasting impressions." That’s exactly right Charles. I chalk it up to people not hearing enough live music especially acoustic music. How can you know what something is "supposed" to sound like if you have little or no reference to base it against?

Hi Sbayne, 
I don't know what accounts for such wide differences in listening impressions.  I do hear live acoustical music fairly often. Others in that room certainly could have had as much or more exposures to live music as I.

Obviously Dr. Johnson has more than I have and yet he was very happy and proud of the music reproduction from that system. I've heard Reference recordings sound quite a bit better in other systems. 
Charles 

@almarg Thanks for your thoughts on the topic. Insightful as always!

My take-away / reasoning was one of a more focused component, rather than one that was broadly utilitarian....which is likely why it (the MZ2) is so good in certain applications. I imagine that LTA designed and voiced it to pair best with their own amps which have EL84 and KT77 tubes.

Perhaps @lancelock can reach out to Mark and get LTA’s take on this, specifically performance with 300b based amps, before we (and I) spike the soup with too much speculation. : )

Live acoustical music is my fav and one of the reasons I enjoyed my time in New Orleans so much. There were musicians performing at practically every street corner. While reproducing the sound of such live music isn't possible IMO getting as close to it as I can is my goal. Maybe I should just move to New Orleans, forgo having an audio system and sit on Bourbon Street all day listening to live performers while enjoying gumbo!