2. amps-preamps
  3. 193759-198816

Cary SLP 98 users, past and present, are there any left?

Recently purchased the above mentioned preamp in Jaguar red, has phono section and Lundahl MC upgrade, also Hexfred rectifiers and is direct-coupled. Most of that means little to me but I know the upgrades matter. I am very pleased to far with what I hear and I am listening to nearly new cheap tubes. I'm going to burn them in awhile before deciding what to look for in tube rolling. I have yet to try the phono section as I use my Cary PH301 phono pre and SAEC SUT. Listening to LP12 with Linn Karma LOMC. It all sounds very damn good to me. CD's are easier on the ears than they used to be. I think the tubes tame them down a tad. Currently listening to them on a very old Pioneer DVD player V7400. I think it may sound better than my 20 bit Denon which is up for repairs. 

Cut to the chase, just wanted you guys to know the electronics, front end anyway. The first time I tried the new Cary, I had the umbilical crossed up and only the phono stage seemed to engage. The PS got quite warm. It still runs warm and that is the question. How warm should it run? It's certainly not too hot to touch but it is warm, I'd say twice as warm as my PH301 PS, which is about the same case. It does sound very good. I'm just hoping that I didn't cause harm in my first session. Was only a few minutes but knew something was wrong and found that the umbilical was the problem. I was shocked that it was possible to put it together incorrectly. Never had that trouble on the PH301.

Anyway, overall, I am very pleased and know that I will likely be looking at different tubes down the road. Only complaint is the remote. 5k preamp and 50 cent remote. Kind of cheesy. Not enough to be displeased with anything, just an observation.

billpete
immatthewj
3,300 posts
 

Wouldn't my system sound terrible if I have the speakers wired out of phase?

@billpete , even though you addressed this to @decooney, I'll quickly butt in to say that if BOTH speakers were hooked up red to black they would not be out of phase with each other (if that's what you meant), and since the SLP-98 is phase inverted, I think that this would put them in phase with the preamp.  I think this is the difference between absolute phase and relative phase.  I think.  @erik_squires  is someone else who could probably clear this up for us. 

(My CDP has a phase inversion switch so the phase of the CDP, in balanced mode, can be matched to the preamp; for a while I misunderstood the way my preamp was set up and I had the phase set wrong on my CDP and I could not hear a difference.  Which is not to say that there was not a difference, just not one that jumped out and slapped my face.  But it could be the difference between listening fatigue and  happiness at the end of a multi hour session.)

immatthewj
3,300 posts
 

@decooney , well, if I thought I was confused before I read through that thread, there is no doubt I am confused now!  LOL!  I'll try it again in the morning when I am "fresh", or as fresh as I ever am these days.  

erik_squires
16,898 posts
 

Wouldn’t my system sound terrible if I have the speakers wired out of phase?

@immathewj

Honestly no. Hahaha. You have to have a good trained ear. It just so happens I’ve run across 2 situations in a month at 2 different dealers where this happened and I alerted them to it. And these were not mid-fi stores either.

In one case the Russian oligarchy dude bought the out-of-phase Wilsons. In part because the phase reversal sounds cool and maybe open. However as others expect, bass was missing.

That’s for an entire speaker being out of phase. Individual drivers may have different weird effects. Like, if the woofers alone are out of phase, you’d only hear missing bass, but if say the midrange was out of phase (relative to other speaker) I imagine it would sound odd in other ways.  Some even use these types of effects to create pseudo-stereo.  Kind of.  So, no I don't expect this would be truly horrible.

The OP has bi-wirable speakers, so easy to test woofers and mids with a battery.

I do think for the OP it's good to check the basics.  Make sure all drivers are actually working, and that they push/pull in the right direction before talking power cables... :D :D :D

erik_squires
16,898 posts
 

PS - Rather than me try to describe this, why don't some of you try it?  Reverse the speaker leads and tell me what you hear. :)

billpete OP
270 posts
 

@erik_squires 

Going to try reversing speaker leads today. May also try the battery test just to verify that the AR9's are in phase to begin with. Can't imagine that they are not but you never know I guess. I have mistakenly wired speakers out of phase many years ago and bass was very clearly lost, which alerted me to checking the wiring.

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