2. speakers
  3. 1376072885

Food or beryllium tweeters for my DeCapo's

The question is moot. Like any TRUE Audiophile, the speakers must come first. Food is a luxury that I sometimes cannot afford. I have decided to feed the Reference 3a DeCapo-i's the meal that they so much deserve. The new Beryllium tweeters fresh as summer corn from Divergent Technologies. I first decieded to purchase the DCaps about a month ago. Speakers come and go 'round hear like the wind at my rear. It seems that every time I look up there is a new baffle staring at me. Sometimes not even a baffle. Maybe a tootie looking horn or chrome balls with a metal grill. You get tha picture. I'm an addict. Driven by reviews, a few words from other addicts or a half naked cabinet. Yep, that's me and I'm proud of it. I've made so many mistakes that it is a wonder that my ears haven't packed their cochlears up and walked out the door.
So there I sat about a month ago, armed with nothing more than a Jolida 202brc and wad of cash form the last set of flying baffles. What to do what to do...(?). Just as I was starting to itch all over, you know the feeling, slobbering over pictures of the stuff you cannot afford.. You dream about all the speaker candy here on A'gon and elsewhere; like the audio salons that you have been baned from (the owners harsh words still ringing in your ears.... GET OUT ! YOU CHEAP BAS.... ) I still remember hitting "enter" and there they were. Gloss Cherry DeCapos on wonderful Skylan stands. Were they gone yet ? I trembled as I stumble typed the words out to the owned... Do still you them have ?? Please me let know ASPA. The hours seemed like weeks as my fingers dug into the new leather case for my Ipad. You would know the one. The only APP is the one for A'gon. The hours seemed like weeks .... And then ! The reply.. "Yes, I still have them". As the thousand hot pokers left my body, I replied... I'll boy them. He was close. I drove to pick them up, brought them home with a minimum of speeding tickets and let the little Jolida do its work on them. The thousand or so speakers in my memory banks turned dark and left me alone to absorb the wonders of these little cherry boxes. My mind immediately searched its cells for my best amps. Edge, Rowland, Classe, CJ, ARC, Bel Canto, Kora... The list seems endless, and ALWAYS "that" question..... Tu be or not tu be. Nuts. The speakers are soooo good. What to do?... The answer came in the Heavenly form of an Audio Analogue Maestro Settanta Rev 2 integrated amp. It arrived and pure bliss smacked me between the ears. The only thing missing was perhaps the over the top Beryllium tweeter. There was a little food left in the cabinets. A half a gallon of milk, some cheese and small pudding cups. There was enough money to order the tweets.
As I sit on my porch, smoking my pipe, the words "out for delivery" are on FedEx's tracking page. I just looked in my pocket and found a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. It won't be long now. Should I let you know ?

Moron this later.
Tubeears
tubeears
tubeears OP
136 posts
 
DeCapo

Tubegroover,

It looks as though we are a mirror image of each other. My wife doesn't just like them... She IS in love with them. However, if they were in the Nextel, that love would have vanished and the speakers would have been made to disappear within moments of their arrival.
I am looking strongly at my cables as well. I like them very much, but what I am seeing in the DeCapos is a speaker like you have so correctly described. They are now able to flesh out every nuance of every fine detail. The cables themselves had well be able to do that trick ... or the DeCapos won't be able to see those small details (to be able to transduce them). The changes to the DeCapos were far from minor ones (with the addition of the new tweeter) and they can now compete with the big boys. As was the case before the new beryllium tweeters were installed, the DeCapos demanded the best in equipment to allow them to become the tasty meals that they were. Now, with the upgrades, the DeCapos have went stellar.
I talked with a very knowledgeable dealer, one that has considerable experience with the DeCapos, both new and old and he feels much in the same way. Sooooo.... Here we sit with speakers that demand cable well in excess of what the little speakers cost ! They should have renamed them "De-Lemas"... Well, we will eek our way thru it, I'm sure.
Right now, the JPS cables are just fine and I have a back up pair of Moanster Cable Retro-Sigma Gold. They are quite wonderful sounding, smooth and with a very musical presentation.... Stereophile howled about them and the matching IC's. I have a pair of them as well. The point is.. All the Howling in the world doesn't mean that they are the best choice for the DeCapos. The DeCapos are just too big for their own pants. Anymore, speaker cable only means HYPE to me. The for instance the Munster Cable. The little darlings come with a ( Halliburton style) all aluminum briefcase. OK, if that's that game, the DeCapos should come wrapped in VW Touareg (brown leather and TDI, please). Anyway, pale-ease cable companies, Just put the money into the cables and put the cables into a bag and just gimme da bag. If I need a briefcase, I'll need a job first ( and one that pays enough to buy the stinking cables on and on). Sooo, we are in a pickle. The DeCapos are in another league altogether from their ancestors. They have evolved, and they are driving us to evolve with them... Like it or not.

Lend me some help here and let me know where I stand. Before I jump ears first into some kind of odd review of the beryllium tweeters ( in addition to how the DeCapos sound as a whole). I want to hear some ideas and opinions on the equipment that I thought was just fine, and even purchased targeting the DeCapos...

My set-up as it sits now:
Integrated amp: An Audio Analogue Maestro Setantta rev 2. I had not heard this particular amp. Until I purchased this one ( thru A'gon), The only AA amp that I had owned was an AA Puccini just before the dinosaurs died out, and i loved it. This amp sounds astonishing, looks good and the reviews are solid. It seemed as though it is the perfect match for the DeCapos, even if it is solid state. Get your Google gloves on and take a ride to find out about an amp that is world class and a pure joy to hear. Dig deep enough and you will see some spectacular photos of the insides of this beautiful beast.

I also have a Jolida 202brc that stuffed with premium tubes. The 202brc is a real sleeper in the Jolida lineup. Just a honest, straight forward example of what a good tube amp should be, at a lower price level. There are better tube amps, to be sure, but for the money, this one is very musical and has great pace, authority and responds well to tube change.

Dacs: One is the new Jolida Glass Tube dac. Two 12ax7's drive the out puts. I use either Tung Sols or re issue Mullards. Very well made. Extremely versitel and comes stock with parts that are normally upgrades for other units.

The other is a Michael Yee Dac one. His first but an amazing dac nonetheless. MR. Yee is a master with analog. His head amps are legendary and Dac One is a masterpiece of parts quality and workmanship.

CDP: Jolida JD 100. Very musical, good sounding player/ transport.
Again, two 12ax7's for the output. It has two separate analog outputs and a coax digital. I can switch back and forth between the stock CDP, or thru the upgraded Jolida dac or quickly switch to the Michael Yee.

Tuner. Mcintosh MR-78. I like this tuner better than any that I have ever used or heard. A real chunk of audio candy.

Cassette decks. I have two. A Nakamichi MR-1. It is one of the best. Only balanced ins/outs and every possible function. A spectacular deck.
Number two. Another Nakamichi . A CR-2a. A great sounding piece. Perfect to mate and copy with my MR-1.

Cables. JPS Superconductor plus ic and speaker cable.
Monster Sigma. Ic and speaker cable
Music Metre IC's and Digital cable

Vibro-pods under everything, including me. Also many assorted tweaks, Blue-Tac, bean bags .... Lots of little things that I probably should not have spent money on

Apple TV... I use this a lot for Internet radio. I run the HD channels in to either dac.
It sounds just fine for my casual listening. At time it actually sounds better than I want to believe that it can. I kick my own but every day thinking about all of the money that I wasted on XM Radio ! The Apple cost about a hundred bucks at Bad Buy !

Monster cable HTS 3600 line protection. Nice little inexpensive unit. 10 plug Ins and fairly good protection. A Shunyata is next in line.

Tubegroover, the words in your last post are so exact and so much of what I am finding that I am in hope that everyone can read what we say. It is like there is no need for any other loudspeaker to exist at all. What is ..oh so amazing, is that just about anyone can afford them. Even more so with the new Dulcets. These speakers are really a true gift to the Audiophile community. I rejoice every day that I wasn't born a Newt, blind and deaf in a dark cave with no electricity, my little sticky fingers not able to go around the volume knob on my new amp ( and my body to light to force the buttons down on the remote).
Indeed, I am gifted... I am Newtless and proud of it.

OK... There it is. Blast the hell out of it.

Oh.. Ya, I forgot to add what speakers that I have. Ref. 3a, DeCapo's.
And also a pair of the first PBN Montana SP's. they are in the bedroom closet ( a good place for them IMHO). They are a bit beat up from me throwing various tools and things at them, but they work like they should. Stereophile went GaGa over them. They have a crossover the likes of which I have never seen.... Literally dozens of parts.. All top grade, like Hovland and others. If Tash ever seen the crossover in these, he would have a massive coronary on the spot. It takes a half of a CD for the signal to pass thru all the parts in these things. There are probably still a bunch of words and notes stuck inside them that have to be pryed out. I am giving them to a friend next month.
tubegroover
2,320 posts
 
Oh the Montanas, yes I know a few that have them. One set-up isn't so bad and he's had them for years with ARC gear. I couldn't tell you the model number. Certainly not my cup of tea for most music but he is primarily a rocker listens to quite a bit of jazz and some classical, it works for him just fine. I heard a pair of the big KAS many years back at a dealers. He just loved them, their dynamic capability you know. I just didn't get it and couldn't wait for it to end and besides the things were so big they reminded me of two large coffins. Another guy whose large Montana system I only heard once in his huge listening room was all tweaked out with thick slabs of maple under all components, all the cabling with risers keeping them from touching the ground. To me all the tweaking did was highlight all the issues I had with his system. We listened to a lot of old rock and roll that night including Ted Nugent, the Stones etc. and I throughly enjoyed it. But THEN we put on one of my favorite piano recordings of Earl "Fatha" Hines and immediately realized I never knew a piano could sound like that, very interesting. We talked later and I told him how much I enjoyed the evening, which I really did it was a lot of fun listening to rock and roll with the guys. My only regret is I wished I had brought some of my favorite rock recordings. I mentioned I didn't realize he was such a rock fan. He said he wasn't really but was more into light jazz and female vocalists. Now that was a tough one to figure out. Those big Montana's sure could boogie but for female vocals and jazz? As I always say, to each his own. Audiophiles are a real diverse lot but one thing most are not lacking is passion and opinion. I personally find most multi-driver system problematic with a few exceptions. The coherence is generally blown and you end up listening to a speaker instead of music. The older I get the more apparent it becomes.

Now back to the DeCapos. I think the only thing left for me to do is find the right cables. I may have found them after that last session. They don't cost an arm and a leg and they just sound right when used together. The problem is they look like a bad joke, something Rube Goldberg threw together in an afternoon with the ground wires separate from the helix solid cores wrapped something that seems like mylar. The ICs are app. half inch strips of very thin copper wrapped in the mylar type material with unruly ground wires outside the mylar with VERY minimalist connectors that attached to the components rather loosely, not snug like you would expect. The power cords have round plugs that look like they were procured from an electric supply house that went out of business 80 years ago. Remember the old toastmaster toaster with the cloth cord with the wire wrapped in asbestos inside? Well those plugs would be on the end of that cord. I really haven't seen anything like that for years. The power strip looks like the economy model at Wal-mart wired the same as the power cords sitting on a beautiful 6" slab of solid maple. I would hope that it is at least 12 guage, fires you know. I guess I've given it away now. Totally minimilist Tubeers, no fancy leather or solid dovetailed wood cases with thick felt lining with the brand name printed on fancy silk. In any case, before going that route I am going to reconfigure my system, build a new wood equipment rack so if I do decide on these cables, they can't be seen. Besides, too much clutter in the room, its time for a makeover and my wife agrees.
tubeears OP
136 posts
 
DCaps

Tubegroover,

I'm still chuckling over the Montana experience that you had. I have as well, a friend that lives his life for them.. He is only "half" deaf at this point. I believe that Montana's theory is this... The more deaf you get, you progressively increase the size of the Montana that you buy. Once completly deaf, you are left with only their subwoofers and a giant Krell amp on a rolling pallet. I personally do not like my clothes and body hair removed by air waves produced by a speaker the size of a battleship. Ironically, from what I have heard, the founder of Montana, Peter Norbeak (sorry, I'm not sure of the spelling ) originally got his start working at Cary Audio. He put together the Cary CS 301 (or could be the SP301... Not sure). Anyway, it could be bought as a kit. Those are the ones in my closet. They could also be bought pre-built. They were nice looking, sort of Merlin-like and used the De-appolito driver arrangement using high quality Vifa mid/woofs and A Scan-Speak 9500 series Tweeter. The cabinet is a real nice composite of some kind and was black lacquered. A very good arrangement till Peter found a big bucket of crossover parts. After shoveling them onto a board full of silicone sealent, he turned ... What started as "Nice" to "nasty" ...real fast. I'm going to CYA here a just bit and say that all of what I know about all of this is just folk lore and Is just here-say.... Anyway, the way that I heard it , when Peter left Cary (for whatever reason) he formed the PBN Montana line. To me, it looked like he took the speaker he designed at Cary with him, and re-named it the Montana SP. At that time, Stereophile nailed it for a formal review and it was off to the loudspeaker races for Montana. If you look way back to the Sphile reviews, you will find that one reviewer, in particular, was Very enamored (and again, for whatever reasons) by Montanas speaker line up. I don't believe that there were the Montanasaurus offerings at that time. Anyway, it certainly doesn't hurt to have a lust filled reviewer from a big audio rag slobbering accolades on their keyboard for you. So, anyway, the speakers got bigger and the sound got louder. Some people love them. And as you rightfully say, they can engage you with dynamics like no other and somehow remain coherent. As a side note: I don't pay much attention to the magazine reviews anymore. Much of the reason is because of antics of some of the reviewers, their biases and admiration for their chosen demigods. Their reviews seem to parallel watching them climb the rocky cliffs, to their favorite oracle, just to share some fine wine and a piece of cheese... All the while, sitting with their mentors, starry-eyed listening to their most resent product. I much more enjoy and absorb the the words that continue on in the forums and also from what dedicated and informed salon dealers say. Those dealers that are all that is left to display what we so undyingly seek.. I would still pick the DeCapos over the KAS's, or any other mammoth shrouded in exotic finishes belching out SPL's that would cave my walls in. My loud days are.. quite thankfully, all over and if a speaker can't show me greatness at low volumes.... I don't want it in front of me (or sneaking around behind me either). A scant few speaker can play well at below speaking level, and the DeCapo is at the very-most top of that list.
A little about pianos....
I was actually picking out some of my better piano flavored music as I read your post. Technically speaking, I don't know much about pianos... except, I feel that they are much like hi-end audio componants. The best of brands are very much argued about. Some will say... This piano is better ... That piano is better, and on and on the battle for best goes. Owners or afectionatos of them will throw their favorite picks into the ring like big wooden pit bulls to see who's best. I would think that a piano, whatever the brand, could have a fare amount of trick tuning done to it to give it a sound that the player likes. I can tell a difference in brands, at times, but sorry to say that I haven't chosen a preference. I am fond of both uprights and standard. I like most of the piano sounds that I hear, but it is mainly due to the artist and/or the performance. I can put up with poor recordings (to a point) if the artist/performance are there (in the presentation) for me. One great CD that I can't seem to find tonight is my Holy Cole Trio, with the cut... "I can see clearly now" on it. After a just a few lines of just her singing.... a piano makes its amazingly vibrant introduction and ... Wow. Is it breathtaking. I really want the DeCapos to take a look at that. I don't know the brand of the piano. Then of course there are all,of the old Audiophile standards... Lincoln Mayorga and Amanda McBroom .... Dave Crusin and then on cassette tape, most of the Windom Hill recordings. Windom Hill seems to do piano very well, on their tapes.. and on a good cassette machine (like the Nakamichi MR-1), it is so so pleasing and musically captivating. I really envy you for being able to play one of the things. I would give it a try, but I have too many Vibra-Pods stuck to my fingers.
Back to the DeCapos. So far, what piano that I have listened to has been a real surprise. They present a piano in true life form. I did not think that they could create and hold (with substance) the mass of a piano. They not only engage you with the sound, but the emotion of the performer. They cast an image so wide and deep that it feels as though the piano is sitting in the room along with you ...with all else that is on stage. Usually, the vast majority of speakers reduce the piano to a small, vague and smeared outline of itself, with little or no weight. The DeCapos show the piano for what it is. I am very, very impressed. I also feel very lucky, both for myself and others that own them. We have something that so many others are searching for, I'm sure happy my search is finally over. I love the idea of the Grand Veena's, but I'm afraid that my small listening area dictates the use of the DeCapos. I just could not be happier.
rebbi
1,326 posts
 
If you guys want an amazing "goose bump" listening experience, pick up a copy of Sade's latest album, Soldier Of Love, and play track 3, "Morning Bird." I played it for an audiophile friend of mine on the De Capo's (who has some very good speakers at home) and he was stunned. Just sat there saying "wow" and "my speakers won't do that." :-)
rebbi
1,326 posts
 
By the way, I am experimenting now with switching between the 20 watt "triode" mode and the 40 watt "ultra linear" mode of my Manley Mahi amps. The jury's still out. They sound "different," but I'm not sure which mode I like better.
More to discover