My objective is to duplicate the sound of a good jazz venue as best I can. I'll never match it but getting close is fine. I've had various audio components through the years and tubes particularly DHT tubes/ASSET have gotten me the closest. So this is where I will settle down and appreciate.
Balanced AC power is fantastic !! 1800va balanced isolation transformer/conditioner. All aspects of music reproduction are improved for every single component.
Tripoint Tripoint Troy.
A wonderful grounding box component. When added to my system it increased the sense of natural sound quality and emotional engagement. The Troy has a humanistic and “soulful “ quality to it.
Coincident Speaker Tech Total eclipse 2
This wonderful speaker is transparent,open and involving. It`s large yet completely disappears as the source of sound within the room. Very easy to drive,94db and 14 0hm impedance (Minimum 10 ohm). I replaced the stock Solens capacitor with the Duelund CAST in the crossover.
Coincident Statement linestage
Superb performance. In my opinion , a masterpiece by Israel Blume. As would be expected, a wonderful match with its sibling the Frankenstein MK II.
Coincident Speaker Tech Frankenstein mark 2
A terrific 300b SET amplifier that is the foundation of my system. The EML XLS 300b tubes are a superb match with this amplifier.
Acquiring these 300b SET mono blocks changed the course of my music listening experience. They elevated the emotional engagement, tactility and “breath of life “ realism.
Yamamoto YDA-01
Wonderful music lover's DAC that has a very natural/organic sound quality. Duelund CAST addition(output coupling capacitors) makes it sound even better. It has a very minimalist circuit/design that was implemented well.
Ocellia Silver Reference IC
Very natural and pure sounding with excellent tone and timbre preservation.
Ocellia Silver Reference Speaker Cable
Same qualities/ comments as the IC.
Star Sound Technologies Sistrum Apprentice component platforms..
These Star Sound platforms are mandatory in my system. Effectively managing resonance and vibration leads to a very noticeable sound improvement with every component and especially the speakers. Excellent product.
High Fidelity CT1 Ultimate Digital cable
A highly impressive digital cable that mates beautifully into my system. Contributes to the natural sound presentation.
Pro-Ject Audio Systems CD Box RS2T
This is a superb Redbook CD playback transport. It’s both high resolution and impressively natural.
. I’m using the excellent Fidelizer Nikola II LPS. Splendid pairing.
Lavricables Grand and Master series Power Cables.
Pure silver wire and unshielded power cables. These are used with all of my audio components. They are very open, transparent, high resolution with beautiful natural tone and timbre presentation.
Abbas Esoteric Audio 3.2SE
Built by renown Ukrainian Abbas Zulfugarov. NOS DAC utilizing the classic Phillips TDA 1541 multi bit chip. Two 6080 tubes in the analog stage. 5 various rectifier tubes in the power supplies.
3 separate toroidal transformers (And 2 chokes ) for the power supplies.A very serious and successful upper tier DAC implementation. Using with the Abbas SPDIF and power cable.
The link Rebbi posted below works fine for me. If you used the link provided in the thread he started today about his blog update, that link had a problem, which I've corrected in a post in that thread.
02-04-15: Rebbi I am running Reference 3A De Capo speakers. They are rated at 92 db efficient, but I am beginning to think that this rating is "optimistic."
Rebbi, first, congratulations on the successful build!
Yes, the 92 db rating is significantly optimistic according to measurements by the well regarded National Research Council of Canada, which you may recall I linked to in my post dated 10-20-14 on page 5 of your "Greatest Bargain in SET" thread. The disparity of slightly greater than 6 db (on a per watt basis, as opposed to the less meaningful 2.83 volt basis), corresponds to about 4 times as many watts being required to produce a given volume level.
Regarding the first of the three courses of action you described (living with the limitations of the Kit 1 on certain recordings), a point to consider is that driving a speaker with a severely clipped waveform not uncommonly results in destroyed tweeters, especially if it is done repeatedly within a a short amount of time. Even though clipping is most commonly induced by high amplitude signals at low frequencies, the clipped nature of the waveform results in an abnormally great amount of energy in the treble region, which is not present in the original signal.
So if you were to settle on the present speaker/amp combination as your long-term solution, that concern would always be on your mind, and I suspect would often interfere with your enjoyment of the music.
I'm not particularly familiar with Omega or Tekton speakers, but if it were me, consistent with the comments by several of the others I would put the Coincident Triumph Extreme II high on my short list, if its $3400 listed price (converted to US dollars, and including stands) is not prohibitive.
Actually Rostropovich recorded it multiple times, with various string quartets including the Emerson and the Melos, on Deutsche Grammophon. I'm not familiar with those performances, though, and I tend to be leery of DG sonics.
10-25-14: Brownsfan Schubert, in particular, is a right brain listen for me. His music is generally exquisitely well crafted, but his craftsmanship hides behind the shear beauty of his work.
10-25-14: Charles1dad Bill, Based on your grouping of "left" vs "right" brain composers and musician interpretation, I know I'll favor right brain perspective.
Bill (Brownsfan), beautifully said!
Charles, if you want to explore the music of Schubert there is perhaps no better place to start than his String Quintet, D. 956, Opus 163. It is widely considered to be among the greatest, and possibly THE greatest, piece of chamber music ever written.
Perhaps Bill or our A'gon colleague "Schubert" can recommend a good currently available recording of it. I believe that the only recordings I have of it (most notably Bernard Greenhouse with the Juilliard Quartet, and Heinrich Schiff with the Alban Berg Quartett) are long since out of print. Those two, btw, being wonderful performances, but which leave something to be desired sonically.
DrDavid, I second the comment by Brett (Isochronism). That that must be a spectacular setup indeed! A question: How are you matching the gains of the two amps?
Brett, if you are thinking of passively biamping (i.e., without a crossover ahead of the amps), a point to keep in mind is that since both amps would be outputting a voltage swing corresponding to the full-range signal, you might not be able to utilize all of the power capability of the 300B amp without driving the 45 amp into clipping. Or, depending on the voltage swing capability of the 45 amp, high volume peaks might drive it to a point where it is not yet clipping, but where its distortion performance starts to degrade.
I've seen that point overlooked many times in situations where passively biamping two amps having significantly different power capabilities is being contemplated.
Charles, I just want to say that IMO you've got a truly wonderful system that is beautifully set up, and that I always enjoy and appreciate your constructive and knowledgeable posts in the forums.
