Music Reference RM9 and Preamp Experiences

I've been at Roger's place a couple tines and know he does listen. I think like most his designs have a house sound. I also know he spends a lot of time measuring, specifically for distortion and hum. He is probably one of the few designers who publishes the hum measurements for his amps.

I know one thing, the RM-10 is one quiet amp, more so than my S-30 and Auricle Musicblocs. It is probably the quietest amp I've had in my system since my solid state TRL D-225.

Roger sounds alot like John Dunlavy - makers of fine products that measure well, both degreed electrical engineers, and both myth busters regarding audio vodoo and pixie dust - I don't think either view wire, capacitors, transformers, resistors as totems imbuing equipment with "magic" (and we all do look for that magic).

Not only does Roger eschew audio voodoo and pixie dust, he also challenges standard engineering principals of application design and feedback. Anyone who can make a EL84 amp which outputs twice the watts or more than other EL-84's do (writing his own Class AB2 application versus copying/modifying what's generally available in the books), uses 14db of negative feedback (when most advertise "zero" feedback), is dead quiet, and sounds magical to boot must know something about electrical engineering and audio design.

The RM9 in high gain mode makes it a great candidate for using a passive type "preamp" or control unit as I prefer to term it. I think it and the RM10 are classic designs - meaning they are VERY good indeed.

Never thought I would do it, but today I put my RM9 SE up for sale, with my speakers the RM10s have plenty of power and I will continue to use it and my Atma MP3/Atma-sphere M60s with my Merlin VSMs (which I never plan on selling). In a way, I wish I only had the RM9, but I feel too vested in the Atma combo and stash of NOS tubes for them. Maybe I'll be lucky and it won't sell:) The Lightspeed Attenuator works beautifully with both.