Audio Horizons TP 2.0 Preamplifier

Sherod and La45, have you had a chance to install RX8man's isolation kit and what do you think? My unit is with Joseph at the moment and we are contemplating having him float the board.
Sherod - any further interm update on the V caps progress? Once the bypass caps have broken in, will you be A-B comparing them to the V caps alone?
Thanks Joe

Hi Joe,
Yes, I have installed the floater kit on only the tube board. Since I put the kit in at the same time that I added the V-cap teflon bypasses, I can't do a fair determination of how the floater kit has improved the sound, but I am going to take an educated guess that it's making an improvement as isolating the tubes and caps from the environment should help the sound improve. At this juncture, I have approx. 175 hours on the bypass caps. Still too early to make an evaluation. I am hoping to hear an improvement by late tomorrow evening when they reach the 200 hour mark. At this point, I'm not too impressed yet with the bypasses. I am missing the sweetness and transparency that the OIMP caps were providing by themselves. Up until about the 120 hour mark, the sound has been dreadful to say the least. These teflons are ugly sounding the first 100+ hours. By the way, Joseph and Victor are tonight, as I am writing this, doing an evaluation of the OIMP caps in Joseph's preamp at his home. Victor is going to give me an early opinion either later tonight or tomorrow. Their OIMP's only have about 80 hours on them, still not fully broken in( takes @ 200 hours) but 80 hours should give them enough to form an early perception of their potential. I hope to give a preliminary impression of the overall sound by the end of the weekend. By the way, what's Joseph doing to your preamp? You must be missing it in your system.

Yes, I am missing my unit. I have had a month of patience practice. My Northstar DAC was in for repair of two transitors resulting in no right channel. While the DAC was in I had it modded by Mauimods and just got it back yesterday with great results. Took it world class IMO.

Joseph is doing a permanent fix on the grounding issues I had when I got a custom AH (only XLR on the output side at my request). Meanwhile I am using my ss Aragon preamp. This hiatus has given me a chance to go backwards and see how much difference having a great versus good source and preamp has made. Boy, the difference is not subtle.

Hi Gammajo,

I have not installed the floating kit yet. I hope to do so next week as time allows and you will be the first to know my thoughts on what it does to the sound.

Since there has been some interest in the V cap, let me give you an update. Joseph and I listened to the V caps after 45 hours and again just the other day after 120 hours burn in time. The V cap is an extremely fast capacitor, which means it has excellent transients and micro-detail retrieval, a fine ability to reproduce harmonic texture, especially the higher overtones, and striking ability to reproduce dynamic contrasts. So far, while the caps have improved in reproducing the various registers, it still preserves its tendency to accentuate the higher frequencies at the expense of the lower ones, with the result that as always in such an instance, it disperses sound very well and seems subjectively to have a wider soundstage than the Hovlands. It is a very demanding capacitor since dynamic musical contrasts appear more extreme than usual, and because it is bright and does not lend itself to background music—at least not at this present stage of break in. At times the combination of brightness and strong dynamic response resulted in a harsh edge, especially, for example, when sopranos hit a high note crescendo. In sum it tended to give all music, whether digital or analog, a more pronounced digital feeling. If one has a speaker system that is on the mellow side—what people sometimes call a “polite” speaker--the V cap may add just enough sparkle and quickness of response to it to create a livelier and better balanced system.

We listened to the V caps with three different IC’s to insure we did not have a cable mismatch. With a balanced Transparency, what I have described above was most pronounced. We tried to slow the capacitors down using a balanced copper IC, and indeed, this reduced the digitalizing effect we were hearing and because slower, created a better balance between low and high frequencies, but it thickened the bass and seemed to eliminate the superior micro-detail retrieval we valued before. We tried a new design developed by Joseph using Cardas wire to come somewhere in between, and we did approach the balance of the Hovlands with this IC, but now we were a little slower and thicker textured than the Hovlands.

In sum, the V cap, if it continues to deepen its registers and if with time the edginess diminishes, may be a very promising cap. We will give another careful listen at 300 hours. At the present time, we are unable to recommend it or to make it available to our customers.

On another front, Joseph has completed the development of a two tube phono stage, which is available in a number of configurations—MM or MC, integrated or separate, stock transformer or premium transformer. I brought over a Stereophile CD and LP of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto so we could compare the phono stage using the stock transformers and the premium transformers to Joseph’s AH DAC. In everything but S/N the phono stage was superior to the DAC, but not embarrassingly so. With the expensive Premium transformers, the disparity between the phono stage and the DAC grew more pronounced, again in all areas but S/N, where it is hard to beat a digital source.
This is a superb phono stage, as we had every hope it would be, given it is Joseph’s creation, but frankly the Premium version was even better than we had hoped.

Lastly, a word to those who were surprised that someone auditioned the TP 2.0nB and chose a different preamplifier. Don’t be. When we designed the TP 2.0, we never strove to produce the best preamplifier out there, or even the best preamplifier we could. We deliberately designed to place our products at the bottom of the high end price point—-that is, between $2000 and $3000, believing that a great many music lovers want to listen to music superbly reproduced without feeling they can not without mortgaging the house.

About 10% of the preamplifiers auditioned are returned, usually with comments like this: “nothing under $8000 could touch it. We finally felt the $16,000 . . . delivered just a little . . .” A recent post notes that the Lamm ref beat out the TP 2.0nB. And why shouldn't it? It sells for $13,680. We feel flattered that the TP 2.0nB can be mentioned respectfully in the same breath with a component costing 347% more. Thank you.

And thank you all for all your support. We appreciate it.