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Stereophile - MF Supercharger article-add 550W/ch.

Have you read this article in september issue of Stereophile?
It says that Supercharger pumps up your system to 550W/ch. and leaves "no sonic signature" - "Like a chameleon".

It works like this - simply connect Supercharger between your power (or integrated) amp and speakers.You only need a new set of very short speaker cables.You get 550 W/ch.,better dynamics and bass, and everything else is the same.
It is claimed that it only increases dynamics, and doesn't change "the sound" of your original amplifier.

Without questioning Stereophile's knowledge (it is my favorite magazine) i just find it hard to believe this.
My question - has anyone actually tried adding supercharger to the SET based system,2-20 Watts of primary amp. power?
And can any owner of such SET system say it didn't damage (a bit at least) the magic and "the sound" of SET tubes?
I am aware that in article Scott 299B(18 W/ch.) amp was connected with Supercharger.
I want to hear from owners of SET based systems who have tried this.Or from other people who have some opinion on this subject.I just find this hard to believe.
audiobb
emailists
923 posts
 
As I mentioned in another post, I think one of the few systems that could perhaps benefit from this is MBL 101's. They can use alot of power to wake up supposedly.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,039 posts
 
FWIW the MBL 101s don't really need as much power as people think. Yes, they have low measured efficiency at 1 meter, but as soon as the speaker is put in a real room, the sound radiating in directions other than the one that the microphone was placed in all gets heard. You can add about 6 db to the result. 200 watts is enough power in many rooms.

Back OT: Its a fun idea, but the 'supercharger' will have a negative sonic artifact, one that anyone who values what tube amps do will hear in a heartbeat. I imagine its pretty transparent on transistor amplifiers, Res Ipsa Loquitur.
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dbphd
1,631 posts
 
Could it be that the solid state amp is relatively transparent and thus able to pass along the coloration of the tube amps so beloved by the analog folks?

db
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,039 posts
 
db, don't think for a minute that transistor amps don't have colorations too! My experience is that it is a rare transistor amp that does not also sound like transistors- I can count them on one hand. No wonder that a 'tube-like' sound is used as a complement in reviews of well-received transistor amplifiers

Tubes more closely mimic the rules of human hearing, and while they often have more distortion (not always mind you), they have less of the distortions that the human ear objects to: odd ordered of the 5th harmonic and beyond. The human ear can distinguish these harmonics in vanishingly small amounts.

In this case, the supercharger concept is alluring because you could potentially have a setup that has small tube amp sonic properties along with high power. The 'supercharger' adds its own colorations of odd-ordered harmonics of the type I just described, and its easily heard. Re-read my earlier comments in this context and you will have a clearer idea of what I was talking about.
cjfrbw
148 posts
 
Although it is probably similar to using a tubed preamp as a driver, the concept does make some sense. Although something is going to be changed in the translation, the article states that the interface between the driving tube amp and the MF amp is optimised, more so than the tube amp driving a pile of caps and coils through a crossover. This would help, so I think that it might work to get a pretty nice sound aka "Hybrid" sound and would be great to try with a 2 watt 45 based SET amp.
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