Life after DarTZeel

I sold my Dartzeel amp and have never looked back.

The Dartzeel lacked dynamics and bass control for me. If I ever was in the mood to crack it the Dartzeel never came through. I was also very limited on speaker choice with the Datzeel.

I since moved on to Levinson 33H and Boulder 1060. They both put a big smile on my face and do everything very well. Talk about control and power and those babies can drive any speaker.

Now the Dartzeel preamp is a different story. They hit a home run with that preamp.

The amps that came later for me are a pair of Bryston 28B I feel they are better in nearly all ways. The Dart was expensive when it retailed for $12K, then it became ridiculous

interesting.

Levinson 33H, Boulder 1060 and Bryston 28B preferred to darTZeel.

there are many paths and viewpoints to musical nirvana.....and there is no 'wrong' only different. my comment has no hidden inference.

personally; were i to venture from darTZeel it would be toward SET tubes of some sort.....not toward a more SS sound.....regardless of how much iron grip it provided. that 'grip' is just not essential to my immersion in music compared to other things.

i do own speakers where the darTZeel only needs to drive the speakers down to about 100hz as there are ICE powered woofer/subwoofers below that frequency. these 4 15" powered drivers give me all the 'iron grip' i could ask for.....and they take the signal from the dart so i get the dart magic without any dynamic limitation. even so; my room is large and the dart can energize it from 100hz on up with no problem.

OTOH later this year darTZeel will offer a 500 watt monoblock that will add that ability to easily control any loudspeaker to it's many virtues. for a price one can have their cake and eat it too.

no amp is for everyone. go wherever you find the music touches you.

what would be interesting would be how long does one own a darTZeel compared to how often owners of other amps change them. there is always a pull to try other amps. i've owned darTZeel now for almost 5 years. in the previous 7 years i owned 5 different amps.

maybe it is a matter of one's viewpoint on music.

just like being married (and one's definition of happyness). i still look at pretty women out there (it's biology) but i've been married to my wife for 35 years.