I am back, folks. My system was the third most talked about system after Mike Levine's and Albert Porter's.
For some personal reasons I took a break from audio. But I am back with good news and not so thrilling news. The not so thrilling news is that the system is unchanged. And the good news is that it is so hard to improve it, regardless of the price -- I do not know what to upgrade, except may be cables -- as I hit the peak performance from my perspective. The sound thrills me still every time I listen. Still, 140plus tubes, embedded in the finest of amps and pre-amp driving a legendary speaker that can give a good run for money to speakers costing $100k plus, all making heat and magic at the same time. Wow, life is good.
Acknowledgements:
There are several people I wish to acknowledge who have helped me a great deal in building this system:
1. Charlie, who designed one of the finest preamps. Although, TRL Dude is marginally better, the Charlie X-2 will stay with me for ever and will continue to provide listening pleasures
2, Paul Weitzel of Tube Research Labs (TRL) for his helping on tuning the amps and on his feedback on many other technical aspects of the system at the micro and macro level.
3. David Royalty for building nice wooden battery casing for the TRL moded Sony CD player and also for numerous technical feedbacks.
4. Ivan Li of Hong Kong for showing me the insight into planar speaker placement.
5. Steve Dobbins of Xact audio for coming all the way from Idaho to install the tonearm and overall turntable tune up.
6. many visitors who have graced my listening room with their presence.
7. All audio friends who are not mentioned above.
8. Audiogoners who continue to post interesting and thought provoking comments here.
Many roads indeed. I cannot believe the audiophile journey I have done so far.
If you told me a few years ago I would sell all those powerful state of the art Amps and go to a 2 watt amp with a circuit dating from the 1940s I would have told you you were mad.
But here I am with no itch to do anything. I just wanted to see how these Rike caps sounded? As the Trio has minimal parts in its crossover it's no painful thing to try. Maybe the equivalent of dinner for two somewhere rather than years of $Pain cash. Probably cheaper then buying a power cord!
Charles: yes that is true. The only other Apogee which raises its head against the FR is the smaller Stage. This small baby is one heck of a speaker. I would say it is marvelous gem and highly underrated. I love it. See my comments on "system edited" and see the picture of the stacked Stages.
I sold one pair and kept the other which I will keep it forever.
System edited: Added a picture of Stacked Apogee Stages that I call Apogee Butterfly. I like the sound of the Stage very much and on the grounds of stacked Quads, I attempted to stacked the Stages. The experiment did yield some interesting results but I decided not to pursue it further for two reasons: One, in my experiments I could not perfectly align them. For perfect alignment they needed a good frame, which is a doable project. Second, the bass was not as powerful as the Fullrange. So I abandoned the project but I guess I made a contribution to audio by being the first to stack these speakers :) I plan to stack the Fullranges also, if I get a larger room.
Chadeffect, There's undeniable irony here, after intimate experiences with multiple large, powerful and complex amplifiers. You've found such joy with a 2 watt Japanese ultra simple amplifier. You paid your dues. Many roads do in fact lead to Rome. Charles,
You are a lucky man. I had magical listening sessions with my duetta sigs & MG3.6r. I never got the diva to work as well as the sigs. I love planar speakers and have had the usual suspects. Apogee/magnepan/quad/ML. I have found the Apogee to be the best I have heard with possible exception of the big sound lab ESL. But Apogees especially if brought up to date with latest ribbons and components are wonderful.
But on my journey through hifi it was only when I embraced high efficiently that I realized how much I had struggled with difficult to drive speakers and highly complex amps.
Luckily good sounding powerful amps are easy to find today, and now that I'm free to use any amp including flea power SETs really brought home how much fun trying each topology could be. And how wonderful simple low power amps sound when they have light work to drive an efficient speaker.
I look at your floor full of lovely amps and remember moving around huge amps and wondering if I was mad? There were a couple of times I thought I'd die lifting Halcro DM 68s and ARC ref monos! All in the name of Audiophilia. I can only imagine your pain when it comes to cleaning the tubes and sockets.
But every speaker has it's problems. It's just which ones you are willing to put up with?
I will try to put the Rike caps in at the weekend and report back.
Bypass caps have the best chance of providing nice sound quality improvements when used on large value electrolytic caps in the power supply. When total capacitance needs exceed what film caps offer, this is the very best option to improve the sound.
Bypass caps types and brands impact the sound and one must experiment to find the sweet spot combination.
Gallant diva, The full range is the best sounding Apogee speaker and has the simpler crossover network, there has to be a correlation I'd have to assume ( other factors likely contribute no doubt). Charles,
Ptmconsulting: The FR has a simpler and smaller circuit with few caps and no inductor. The bass and mid have no passive components. So the circuit is only for the tweeter. See my reply to Charles1dad.
However, the ones in the Duetta and Diva are essential. Trust me I have driven these speakers naked with powered line level crossovers and they do not sound good (except sometimes giving a wrong initial impression). Audio designs are trade-offs and the passive crossovers in Apogees are good trade-offs.
charles1dad, it depends which Apogee you are talking about. The Scintilla, Diva, Duetta, Stage, and FR all have either own crossover, supposed matched to their ribbon characteristics including impedance.
The FR has a line level crossover from which the bass signal is split from the MR/TW signal. The low and mid/high signals are fed to different amps. The bass amp drives the bass woofer panel, with an optional transformer (which I have removed because Paul installed a custom transformer in the GT-800 amp to match the 1.9 ohm impedance of the woofer).
The mid/high signal is spilt through a passive speaker level crossover. The mid signal drives midrange range ribbon via a mandatory step up transfoemr. I have an optional large cap (outside its crossover point) installed in series to avoid the ribbon flutter.
The TW signal split from the mid feeds the tweeter ribbons via a high-pass crossover (which can be upgraded with Dueland caps).
I am also thinking of upgrading my passive line level crossover with Dueland or Rikes. In fact, I am thinking of put that simple circuit inside my DUDE preamp.
Chadeffect: agreed, I would try something if it improves my sound and if I can afford it, not based on value for money. One should give up this hobby if price-performance ratio is a concern as that curve is definitely not linear.
My style is not to brag but I changed components for 17-18 years until my present combination, which is unlikely to change because there isn't a better component. Cables, tubes, caps and other minor upgrades will continue and they are fun. The sound is so good that every time I listen I have audio orgasm (as you put it).
Since, I have the Dueland caps for my DUDE preamp, I will install them and hear the difference. I am also going to try your recommended Rike caps and the Jupiters recommended by others. If I hear major improvement (making the great system greater), I will consider upgrading my crossover.
Speaking of the bypass, I have V-caps as bypass caps to my Mundorfs SO, and frankly I did not hear any of their effect, positive or negative.
Chadeffect: The Duetta and Diva are not in the league of the Apogee FR, not even close. The FR is a speaker without compromises and it is sad (for audio hobby) that they were never reviewed. The Duetta sig and Diva received rave reviews and rightly so but the FR was never reviewed, not that I personally care. In fact none of my equipment item has been reviewed! Makes my proud :)
But yes the caps are expensive and that the original caps used in Apogees were not great. But perhaps they were the best value for money in those times.
I ask out of pure engineering curiosity, why do the Apogee require such a large and multi component crossover network? Could it not be simplified? Charles,
That was the point I was rather badly trying to put across. It's not worth pursuing for the Apogee unfortunately.
I did my Apogee Duetta sig and Diva with mundorf silver gold in oil and that was painful enough. I think 15mf or maybe 20mf are the biggest Duelunds you could buy off the shelf. So do the maths to make up those larger caps in parallel! Ouch.
But I say it again. With care you could do something with the apogee xover caps. Used in combination you could get 80% of the sound for nowhere near the US debt with a clever mix and match.
I found mundorf SG in oil worked well with Duelund. The air of the mundorf and slightly hyped presentation compared to the duelund brought life to the planars. But this is why I say you need to audition the places to put them with bypasses 1st.
Mundorf upstream of Duelund was a good way of getting life into a system that my be laid back. I'm sure there are other combinations too.
The only reason I moved to Avantgarde Trios was to get more dynamic contrast. Otherwise I would have died with my updated Apogees happily.
You have to work so hard with plannars to squeeze that bit extra dynamic out. Everything in the chain has to be just right. Magical though when you do. One can only dream of full range Apogees stuffed full of duelund cast...
Actually, my Duetta Sig's have 7 x 10uF caps in parallel = 70uF in one section. Then there's another section with 15uF and another with 20uF. All for the tweeter.
The woofer section has another 15uF of caps.
Not sure exactly what is in the Full Range crossover, but since there are 3 separate ribbons I would expect even more.
Hi Chadeffect, At some point reality does bite. Speakers that utilize multiple capacitors or very large value capacitors in their crossovers can become prohibitive for the Duelund CAST unfortunately. Charles,
thank you. Very kind of you to say and good to know I'm not the only mad person here... They are excellent caps.
Gallant diva, I understand. When I say value for money I am with you completely. Something's are just worth paying for. There is a caveat though.
For a preamp the price wouldn't be too bad, but to do your apogee xovers, let alone all those lovely power amps(heat could be an issue), your bill would start to look like the US debt. You will be looking at around $1,500 to $2,500 per cap for the Duelunds. Yes per cap! I bet your apogee has some large caps, 15mf etc.
At this point only you can decide if its worth doing? Hense my mention of the Rike cap. I would certainly do as much up stream in the signal path as you can with duelund. The Apogee would undoubly reward you with heavenly sound stuffed with duelund. If you have the silver in oil mundorfs in the xover then you will gain. If you still have the original spragues your head will fall off.
But I bet there is joy to be had by carefully selecting caps for specific duties. I would suggest buying a set of bypass caps. Some 0.1mf or 0.01mf duelunds, mundorf silver/gold in oil and use as by passes and work your way around the system auditioning for the most critical places.
You will most likely save thousands of $, have some fun, and learn a lot about your system at the same time. Your worst case situation is you buy all duelunds anyway and sell the bypass caps afterwards. People will bite your hands off for those caps. Win win.
"The Duelund effect is cumulative because their contribution is in the direction of natural sound, how can a system sound " too" natural? They are exemplary is this fashion. They don't result in analytical-etched nor do they go the other way with redundant warmth. Natural and realism is what distinguishes their contribution." Exactly the point.
