My Long List of Amplifiers and My Personal Review of Each!
@whitecamaross I was curious if you had seen this review. You would be able to try some lower powered tube amps with these as they are 93 db sensitivity. https://hometheaterreview.com/paradigm-persona-5f-floorstanding-speaker-reviewed/ |
grey9hound, Excellent point you made about how efficient speakers enable you to use low powered amps. For clarity and purity of sound, low power amps can be better than their high powered siblings. This is because fewer devices have less distortion than more devices with their likelihood of imperfect matching. I have no experience with low powered tube amps, but they are said to be ideal for very efficient horn speakers. My experience with the Bryston 2.5B SST2 is that it is vastly superior to the 4B SST2 despite the company's claim that they sound the same, have identical specs except for power, blah, blah. |
Once again we are walking down the road of perspective. Various posters have different views of what is more important and/or sounds best to THEIR ears. We do not all have the same preferences in sound and due to experience have specific preferences. There is no absolute and right or wrong is a matter of subjective taste, particularly at the levels of gear WCSS is involved with. What makes a great analogy is cars as I am old enough to have ridden in a Camaro SS when it was new back in the day. While I love big American iron, I also have owned and restored a Lotus Europa, quite a different vehicle. Is one better than the other, yes at some things, yet the other sparkles in a different dimension. Some people love power, some love handling, similar to audio. At the high end you get much of each, in lower brackets you can get much of one and less of the other. Audio is much the same. The same is true with audio gear. Thus, there are no absolutes in terms of "Best". Thinking that a personal preference is superior to other's view is just a fools errand. That is why I LOVE WCSS's journey through gear in a random walk through the top end of what most of us cannot afford. I stole the term "random walk" from a financial reference. There is nothing better than an honest review of all things audio and that is what the journey is about IMHO. I am quite enjoying the ride and the minor bickering is the price I pay for reading all the posts here (not a slam at any poster, just observation). Rock on WCSS!! |
maplegrovemusic, When I heard an older Sanders hybrid 10B well set up at a home, it was superb, rivaling the ML CLX for accuracy at least in the range of the stat panel. The panel of all Sanders models is flat, and the vertical height of the panels is modest, giving superior HF. The Neo gives a reasonable trade-off with strong points of dynamics and great stat midrange, but weak point of HF rolloff compared to the CLX, due to its large curved panel. The original King Sound King was better than all of these for clarity, but its major disadvantage was its 6 foot height of the flat panel. I like the tweeter design of 3 inch wide small height segments, so the horizontal dispersion of HF is excellent. My experience with tall panels is that at the extremes of the top and bottom, the HF are rolled off. So the HF from the most accurate ear level portion of the panel gets added to the HF from the extremes where there is rolloff in proportion to the distance off axis vertically. The total HF perceived at ear level is reduced compared to a shorter speaker, such as my Audiostatic. The most dramatic demonstration of this was when I heard the Stax F81 against the F83 which was two F81's stacked vertically. The F83 was rolled off compared to the F81. When you offered the KS17 for sale, I considered them, but their height caused me to pass. But you may prefer the Adam Audio because its modest size may provide greater clarity than the KS17. I like the panel design of the KS17, but I wish King Sound came out with a short 4 foot model of the same concept. Of course it would be less efficient, but the clarity might be superior to most everything else. And the marketing distribution of King Sound is terrible. No North American dealer carried the Hummingbird electrostatic tweeter. |
ihasaguy, I partially agree with your points about preferences. But the goal of high fidelity is accuracy, literally. The absolute sound of the real thing is different depending on room or hall size or outdoors, listener distance, etc. Here is where preferences play a role--someone might like live music from a distance, and others might prefer close upfront sound. The real purpose of the reference point of the absolute sound is to give one an idea of what a hifi system should be striving for. It is OK to create a sound system of whatever sound one may fantasize about, even if it sounds nothing like the real thing. Just admit that one's goal in that case is subjective fantasy, not high fidelity. |
