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An Audiophile's journey

Well, How do I begin? First of all you english teachers out there just don't read this and we'll both be the better off for it. English grammer and spelling is something that I'm not well educated in. I will tell you that I'm a business owner and at 45 years old I don't hit a lick anymore so, all you proper spelling and grammer people just eat your heart out! Now let's get to what I have to say. I've been an audiophile since I was a kid in the 70s. My parents used to punish me by sending me to my room. It was grounding me for being bad. I was bad a lot! My Realistic receiver, BSR turntable, Technics cassette deck was my best friend. Oh, I forgot to mention my Advent loudspeakers. Anyway, I went all these years with solid state gear. When I finally got old enough to not be punished anymore(at least by my parents anyway) I got some Martin Logan SL3 speakers and a Krell amp. I just thought I had arrived! Bring it on everybody! Several years went by. I ventured into trying a tube amp on my SL3s. WOW! What revelation! It was a Rogue M120 Monos. I remember thinking why can such an outdated technolgy be so right in my rig. Then as time went by I got involved in this new website called Audiogon. Audiogon made it possible to buy and sell stuff at a minimal loss if you didn't like it. WOW! What an Idea. Poor dealers! This was late 90s early 2000. Those were the good old days. There were just a few of us excanging ideas and information. It was like an audiophile AA! I bought and have tried so many pieces of gear that I've forgotten more than others know! Then the SET revoltution came. Man, I fell hard. I've since went back and forth several times from SETs to solid state or push/pull tube amps always trying to find that nirvanna or fountain of youth of audio. Fastfoward through the great Bill Clinton years, I tried my hand at being an in home dealer and found that dealing with audiophiles was worse than babysitting children. So, that didn't last long. I still have some connections but, recently I've been blown away! A couple years ago I had a friend that got some popular UCD digtital amps to try and I thought they had great potential. But, still weren't my SET horn combo. Now this SET horn combo was a biamped system with a digital amp on the bottom (600Hz and below) and a SET amp on the top. It was, what I thought, the magical audio reproduction machine. Then a friend got a Spectron Audio Musician III SE MK II amp for his Aerials. He was blown away. He kept after me to hear his rig. Well, to make a long story longer I gave in and listened. I'm as fimiliar with his rig as I am my own. We decided to hear it in my rig. I didn't habe speakers suitable for this monster of an amp. So, I got some Dali Helcon 400 MkII for audition and we went at it. Well, to say that history was made is an understatment. I've since been selling all tube gear and living in audio heaven. I can't beleive that there is not the first tube in my rig now. My take on this is that solid state manufacturers were resting on there laurels during the late 80s and 90s. That why a 300B SET amp came along and all the people were freaked out by the great sound an 8 watt amp could produce. That great midrange! It's what brought audio out of the dark ages. Solid state has gotten on the ball since then. Digital has come a long way and is now sitting in the catbird seat. Sorry for the ramblings this Monday afternoon but, just had somethings on my chest.
philefreak
rwwear
2,871 posts
 
Pubul57, with an attitude like yours I'm sure you wouldn't like Krell.

From Krell's manual:
Krell amplifiers are best known for their ability to drive any loudspeaker to sound
its best, without regard to impedance or efficiency. I believe that linearity, an
amplifier’s ability to output an exact duplicate of the input signal, is the ultimate
measure of that amplifier’s work. At Krell, I drive amplifier designs toward the common
goal of linearity, through the rigorous application of Krell design principles
that focus our efforts on four major performance factors: distortion, bandwidth,
output impedance, and current capability.

You can and should be skeptical of all things until proven.
My experiences have been very favorable so far.
pubul57
3,712 posts
 
Rwwear, I happy you have found an amp that is wonderful for you. I don't have a particular attitude towards Krell, I know my speakers, and I know they sound better with tubes. No matter what Krell is doing, their amps do not operate like tubes and for your speakers that is proabably a good thing. Whether linear or not, the damping from a Krell amp would choke the bass performance of the Merlins which need low damping to perform their best. No disrespect, but I'll take Bobby and Ralph's advice on the amp/speaker interface appropriate for their gear. No amp is, or more importantly, can be right for all speakers IMHO.
rwwear
2,871 posts
 
I like tubes also and have a tube amp in another system. Maybe you didn't read all of the above posts Pubul57. You are correct tubes can sound wonderful but cannot work well with a large array of speakers like a well designed high current amp. An output transformer with hundreds of feet of wire can cause muddy bass response, loss of transparency and a rolled off top end.

An OTL amp requires many tubes to get the output impedence closer to a speakers. Which is why they work better with high impedences. But many tubes are costly, hot and hard to maintain.

I think when you say your speakers suffer in bass when used with an amp with damping you are mistaking boominess for true bass response. The same thing happened when I used Audio Research Classic 120s with Mirage M1s. The bass was very bloated.

Krell does not claim a high damping factor and claims it is not needed. What they do is build an amp that not only is fully balanced on the input side it is fully balanced at the outputs and controls a speaker's drivers in both directions.
pubul57
3,712 posts
 
Tube bass can sound bloated with the wrong speakers, with the Merlins the bass sounds like live acoustic bass does live, which is not very tight, to my ears, most SS makes them sound like one note, consitpated with no bloom, lack harmonic complexity, and natural decay (pretty darn good with Pass Alephs and XA.5 though, and I suspect the Ayre and a few others). I never heard the Krells you own, though the ones I have heard never came close to making me thing I should move from tubes, so I can't really say what they would sound like with the Merlins, but if it can sound great with every speaker then it must be a great amp. If I understand Ralph correctly, such an amp cannot exist due to the different amp/speaker paradigms he describe, but maybe the Krells you own have found a way to do it.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 
Rwwear, just to set the record straight, an OTL may have a lot of tubes but that is not the same thing as being really expensive and difficult to maintain (although the Fouriers did contribute mightily to that myth).

Krell is correct in that a high damping factor is not needed, even for speakers that operate under the Voltage Paradigm. In fact, the appearance is that the idea of damping factor is mythological, regardless of paradigm. That is a discussion for a different thread. Anyway, Krell is not the only ones that have cherished linearity in an amplifier. If I had to guess :) I would guess that nearly every amplifier designer holds linearity as a primary design goal. But I don't have to guess :)

It is how the designer acheives linearity that is actually the issue. If one does it through the use of negative feedback, then some primary rules of human hearing are ignored, resulting in an amplifier that exhibits loudness. Believe it or not, a stereo should not sound loud regardless of how loud it is actually playing. In order to do that, you have to get rid of loop negative feedback. In doing so, the difference between the Voltage and Power Paradigms is defined. So it is not about tubes/transistors, although quite often that is how the debate appears, it is not about objectivist/subjectivist, although again that is how the debate often appears.

Speaker designers over the years have designed for certain characteristics that they expect from an amplifier, and thus logically and also quite contrary to the words in your owner's manual, there is no amplifier made that will properly drive all speakers made. I allow that you can disagee, but your disagreement will not change this fact, its sort of like you trying to convince me that the sky is green all the time because that is what you believe. Belief and fact are often quite far from one another.
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