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300b lovers

I have been an owner of Don Sachs gear since he began, and he modified all my HK Citation gear before he came out with his own creations.  I bought a Willsenton 300b integrated amp and was smitten with the sound of it, inexpensive as it is.  Don told me that he was designing a 300b amp with the legendary Lynn Olson and lo and behold, I got one of his early pair of pre-production mono-blocks recently, driving Spatial Audio M5 Triode Masters.  

Now with a week on the amp, I am eager to say that these 300b amps are simply sensational, creating a sound that brings the musicians right into my listening room with a palpable presence.  They create the most open vidid presentation to the music -- they are neither warm nor cool, just uncannily true to the source of the music.  They replace his excellent Kootai KT88 which I was dubious about being bettered by anything, but these amps are just outstanding.  Don is nearing production of a successor to his highly regard DS2 preamp, which also will have a  unique circuitry to mate with his 300b monos via XLR connections.  Don explained the sonic benefits of this design and it went over my head, but clearly these designs are well though out.. my ears confirm it. 

I have been an audiophile for nearly 50 years having had a boatload of electronics during that time, but I personally have never heard such a realistic presentation to my music as I am hearing with these 300b monos in my system.  300b tubes lend themselves to realistic music reproduction as my Willsenton 300b integrated amps informed me, but Don's 300b amps are in a entirely different realm.  Of course, 300b amps favor efficient speakers so carefully component matching is paramount.

Don is working out a business arrangement to have his electronics built by an American audio firm so they will soon be more widely available to the public.  Don will be attending the Seattle Audio Show in June in the Spatial Audio room where the speakers will be driven by his 300b monos and his preamp, with digital conversion with the outstanding Lampizator Pacific tube DAC.  I will be there to hear what I expect to be an outstanding sonic presentation.  

To allay any questions about the cost of Don's 300b mono, I do not have an answer. 

 

 

whitestix
alexberger
945 posts
 

Many audiophiles underrate the contribution of pre and power amplifier in sound systems.

In most cases an extraordinary amplifier with average speakers sounds better than an average amplifier with extraordinary speakers.

whitestix OP
733 posts
 

Alexberger,

You are sure right about that.  I have Don Sachs new preamp and his shoebox 300b monos and swapped out my Cube Audio Jazzon speakers for a pair of updated AR 2ax speakers and they sound extremely musical.  A great front end yields benefits no matter what speakers you have.  Rest assured, the Cubes will be back in my system shortly.  

lynn_olson's avatar
lynn_olson
404 posts
 

Yes, I've come to the conclusion that speakers and power amps are about 50/50 responsible for overall sonics. Based on measurements, you'd think that speakers are responsible for 90% of system coloration, but in practice, no. The amps have a big role, too.

larryi
4,334 posts
 

I agree that the amp plays a very big role in the sound, and perhaps, too little attention is paid to the amp.  Far too many pick their speakers first, and then think finding the suitable amount of power will be the primary task in picking an amp.

lynn_olson's avatar
lynn_olson
404 posts
 

I got into the amp game after auditioning both the Audio Note Ongaku and the Reichert Silver 300B on speakers of my own design. I’ve been designing speakers since 1975, so I have a pretty good idea what goes in them and why they sound the way they do. Crossover design errors, diffraction artifacts, enclosure resonances, driver breakup, etc. are things I usually hear in a few seconds when I listen to commercial speakers. So I know speakers pretty well.

What surprised me was the Ongaku and Reichert revealed things about my speakers I did not know were there. And different things between the two: the Ongaku revealed "space between the notes" in a way I had never heard before, as well as extraordinary, almost uncanny spatial realism. The Reichert deepened the emotional response to the music in a way that was outside the audiophile experience and not anything to with coloration or tonal balance. It was just a feeling, even when I was listening objectively and trying to assess what I was hearing. It just snuck up on me with a powerful emotional response.

It’s one thing listening to a commercial speaker that’s off-the-shelf with unknown design goals, semi-custom drivers, and unknown crossover design, but quite another when the speaker is something you’ve taken from initial conception to successive versions to final prototype. You’ve pretty much heard everything it can do, and have already built 13 different crossover variations and auditioned it on eight different amplifiers. You know that speaker inside and out.

And yet my speakers had undiscovered sonic aspects that were NOT part of source impedance (damping factor) or audible amplifier coloration. Things I’d never heard before. What kind of "distortion" gives MORE resolution, or a deeper, more profound emotional response? That’s nuts. Nonlinearity is not our friend; it steals resolution and separates you from the music with a haze of coloration.

So what’s going on here? That’s when I started researching the history of vacuum tubes and started writing for different audio magazines. I don’t believe in copying or "cloning" the designs of others; not only is it dishonest, it reflects a lack of understanding on why a product sounds the way it does. You have to understand the "why" before you can go any further, and that took about five years before I came up with the Amity in 1997.

Amplifiers are not as neutral as we would like them to be, and an amplifier with measured distortion in the parts-per-million range is not necessarily neutral sounding. They all have a sound ... Class D, GanFET, bipolar transistor, pentode, triode, and direct-heated triode.

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