Jeff Rowland 501s and PC1s

Hi Guido, thanks for the advice ... I instructed my wife to do so ;-)

I found an interesting passage in an article from Jonathan Valin about the monos 201 ... here :

quote The 201 sounded quite lovely and lively in the midrange and bass on the constant stream of well-recorded staccatos and pizzicatos that makes up Schnittke’s post-Modernist prank. To my ear, however, there seemed to be something missing from its treble. You could hear the problem on the piano’s sforzandos and little noodling runs in the top octaves, where the 201 seemed to squeeze much of the brilliance out of the instrument’s treble register. The highest-pitched notes just didn’t sound as big spatially, as fully articulated harmonically, or as powerful dynamically as those of the piano’s other registers, as if the Steinway had turned into a child’s piano in the top octaves. Ditto for Kremer’s violin. With the 201, his occasional, eerie, veryhigh- pitched glissandos on an open E string simply evaporated into silence well before they would have (or did) with my reference Class AB amps, the ARC Reference 210 and MBL 9008. The 201 didn’t just roll or soften the treble (as Rowlands often do by design); it cut it off, and with that, the articulation of very-low-level harmonics and dynamics and the full duration of high-pitched notes. ...

I have made a test on my system with the same piece played by Guidon Kremer and I didn't miss anything in the piano high octaves neither on the glissandos on the E string ... but I must confess it's not the same recording (Guidon Kremer has recorded it at least twice) .

It would be very interesting to compare his impressions with ours with the same recording ...

sorry the name of the piece:

Alfred Schnittke’s Quasi una sonata [EMI ASD 3870]
Guidon Kremer & Andrej Gavrilov

Clavil, the fragment you quote from Jonathan Valin's article contains a very good description of the foreshortening of treble low level information which was relatively common on the previous generation ICEpower amplifiers. Others, like Chris Martens, have described the same phenomenon as treble harmonics being disconnected from the fundamental. It is also true that in my experience, the 201 monos tend to sound a little short of 'lung capacity' on power hungry speakers such as -- for example's sake -- the Maggies 3.6. . . hence the feel of a toy piano. Having said that, Valin is comparing a $4K entry level monoblock amp with extremely high end devices costing several times as much. . . the performance delta is not completely surprising. I suspect that if he had the opportunity of applying a PC1 to the 201s, his findings may have been subtly different. . . but there was no PC1 available at the time the article was written. . . or even published.
It is my impression that the application of pre-PS power rectification of one form or an other for ICEpower amps may be a valid methodology to address the harmonic and low level information shortfall of early such devices. Only future may tell. Guido

Hi Guido,

sorry my english is limited ... what do you mean with previous generation? are the ICE - power modules used now for the 201, 501 or 312 from a new generation?

I have definitevely the impression that the sound of the instruments becomes richer with th PC1.

Hi Clavil, ICEpower modules of 501 and 312 are the same ASP1000. 201 uses if I recall correctly the ASP500. These are -- relatively speaking -- current modules. By 'previous generation' I really meant previous generations of end user products. For example, the Continuum 500 can be considered a newer generation product than the 501 monos, because of the more sophisticated pre-PS power management, in spite of being designed around the same ASP1000 ICEpower modules. Similarly, the original BC R100 and the newer Mk.2 versions use the same ASP1000 modules as far as I know, but the Mk.2 has pre-PS power management that the original did not have. The PC1 devices is designed to bridge 102, 201, 501, and C250 products to current generation performance. It is worth pointing out that different manufacturers/engineers evolve their class D creations along different lines, applying different strategies towards similar musical goals, and all operate within the constraints dictated by their respective pricepoints. A priori, it is impossible to decide which approaches will be most successful, and in the end, only our own individual ears can determine what is most suitable for our own system and musical preferences. G.