Infinity Renaissance 90 questions

Hi Melbguy,

I actually responded to you on AK which you will see before you read this but it was without the benefit of your latest comments here. IMO 4K on a line filter is insane but even more so in your case if you buy the Classe CAP because it is so well designed. Read my other comments and digest them. The mods will work out fine if your AE knows what he's doing but the best approach - be it single or bi-amp may not be apparent until the design work is partly underway. I'll explain further tomorrow.

Hi Timpani,

very interesting!

concerning Krell I had a strange experience, I heard following set up:

EVO 900 + preamp EVO n° ?
EVO 505
MIT Oracle
Magico V3
all in a prepared room

and it was ... bad to very bad!

I know a little bit the Mini magicos and the V3 and never before I heard such a dry sound ...

could it be that everything is still more complicate ... like between humans with personal "sympathies and antipathies" between speakers & electronic ?

Hi Clavil,

I've not heard the latest Evo amps but from my experience the really big Krells usually don't sound quite as nice in the mid / treble as the smaller Krell's. My favourite Krell is the FPB300 which is also pure Class A. I heard that the Evo are now class AB ?.

Sometimes a room can also cause a dry and rather bland treble - if there is too much carpet and soft furnishings as well as room treatments that absorb too much treble.

Hi Melbguy1,
Need to give you an update. Switched out amps to a Luxman M-05 Pure Class A 105 Watts per channel into 8 ohms. When I said wow before, double it! The bass extension has been the best I've heard through them. Seems that the best power combination I have found is a tube pre-amp with a hefty class A amp. Hope this helps.

Hi Olp88,
I have an update of my own! I sold my Renaissance 90's a couple of months ago. I thought to myself "Do I really want to stuff around extensively modding these things, getting them re-finished etc and worrying about spare parts?" & came to the conclusion no I don't. The other thing which became very obvious once they were set up is their need for a big iron amp, or bi-amping which I currently don't have the inclination to do. In their place, I bought a pair of Marten Coltrane Alto's (2004) which retailed then for $24kUS. They use the same Accuton drivers used by Kharma & Talon, extremely high order crossovers, Jorma #1 internal wiring (incl: Bybee quantum filters) & awesome piano black carbon fibre monoqoque cabinets with no parallel surfaces, bi-wired WBT binding posts etc & have similarly impressive frequency response & speed as the Rens.

That Luxman does look beautiful! (although these days, given I run fully balanced components, the Lux would be a bit old school for my needs). My Classe Cap-2100 is doing regular duties for now, but my dream set up would probably be a pair of class a Pass monoblocks & a Modwright tube pre-amp run fully balanced, but have too many other priorities upstream/downstream for now!