I have moved to a fully computer based set up as a source. No transport and none of those shiny disks any more.
The system has an open, huge soundstage, with very clean, tight bass that dives deep into two figure Hz.
The sound is very powerful and dynamic. Extremely detailed, but still warm, musical and believable and easy to listen to. With the right recording a reach out and touch holographic image and soundstage is possible.
I have been through quite a lot of equipment. I am and was a huge Audio Research fan for years, and I used their tube monos/preamps with great happiness.
I have pretty much always had planar speakers until recently. So I needed powerful amps to drive Magnepan2.6R/3.6R and Apogee Diva/Duetta sig etc.
I have moved to high sensitivity speakers in the form of the Avantgarde Trios now. This has enabled a move to very low powered SET amplifiers which has been great fun.
I have been searching for equipment that keeps the music free of colour and true to the recording. I believe you choose your source for its sound. The rest of the equipment should let the source do its magic as much as possible and get out of the way of the music.
This unit is modified with Mundorf silver/gold in oil caps, Mundorf tube cap, and Duelund VSF Cu caps. I use Emission Labs mesh plates 45 power tubes. A very refined and beautifully natural sounding amp. Very transparent.
DCS Scarlatti clock
Finest player in the world
Avantgarde Trio
19 ohm 109db/watt with 225 subs
DCS Scarlatti
State of the art number crunching.
PS audio Premier Power Plant
Power regenerator.
Analysis plus Golden oval XLR
Beautiful cable. Amazing detail and still warm and life like
Audio Magic Stealth XXX oyaide
Specially made with Oyaide XXX sockets and furutech input. Much more detailed than the Hydra it replaced
Apogee Duetta signature2 Heavily modified
These have the latest Graz ribbons both tweeter/mid and bass panels. I have external cross overs with mundorf silver/gold in oil caps and Alphacore foil inductors. Caddock resistors and all solid core silver wired. All suspended and vibration free. These apogees take much more power and go way louder and have much better dynamics than the original. Not only that but much improved sound quality. Simply stunning! I have had many planars magnepan etc but these really are the best in every way now. Long live Apogee and Thank goodness for Grazs search for perfection!
Virtual dynamics Revelation 2
This must be one of the only cables I have heard that when compared to cables that seem to "do nothing" or just pass signal untouched this cable does lots but in a good way! A staggering solid detailed sound, but a nightmare to plug in due to its size, weight and stiffness.
Virtual dynamics Master LE
Very nicely focused cable with very low noise floor. The best bass I have heard and startling dynamic speed
Oyaide SWO XXX/SWO GX
Its own spur and conditioned with various filters along the way before reaching the Stealth
Acoustic Revive RR-77
Sends out a very low frequency into the room which disrupts RFI EMI and makes you feel relaxed! Very odd but works well Seems to focus the mid range
Sonic studio Amarra
Bolt on for itunes
Auralex Lenrd Bass traps
I have 8 of these traps placed subtly in the corners of the listening room. They have done a very good job in a room that had quite tight bass anyway.
Weiss Medea plus
Latest super DAC. Volume control on Firewire input. Variable output voltage to match amps. stunning DAC
Curious about if you have had any noise issues with such sensitive speakers, especially from amp to amp, including the Bel Cantos? If so, was tube part of the issue or no?
I have some experience with roomcorrection and dsp. bought a tact rcs in '99. use it now as a measurement tool only. that thing is adding quite a bit of digitis to the sound. my heavily modded tact millenium has got a lot of dsp function which I can control per computer. the millenium is driving the horns of my duo only. it has a sub output connected to another lyngdorf amp drving lyngdorf subs especially designed to be placed into the corner behind the main speaker. on the horns I only use delay which does not harm the sound at all. as soon as you put in a filter, change the frequency response the sounds becomes digital. for me dsp used on mid and high frequencies is a no no. no problems with delay though.
I use eq and a low pass filter on the sub output only.
In your case if your main objective is to time align all 4 drivers keep the amp you already love and do the alignment as I have suggested. adding several amps, a dsp device will complicate your system a lot, not to mention all those additional cables, isolating platforms etc.
better spend some money on fancy caps like duelund or v-caps, just me 2 cents.
I have always wondered about the placement of the Basshorn. Something that large does start to become an issue to place.
I guess maybe the easiest way would be to use a digital crossover and multi amp the whole thing. Then you could delay and adjust phase,EQ etc to your hearts content while sitting in the listening position.
I am sure there must be some very good ones out there now. I have tried a few, but not on the Trio.
Now that I have returned to Tube amps and SET such thoughts become troublesome. But multiple ICE power modules the size of your hand, running cool, all in a rack with a digital crossover/room correction attached would be cheap(ish) and simple. I bet it would sound very impressive. My old Bel cantos sounded pretty awesome on the Trio. Better than many.
Maybe I will try it with some First watt J2s or something when the Emmission Labs tubes get tired. The problem would be finding a high quality Crossover/room correction device. Maybe I could find a Lyngdorf RP1 put some nice bits inside. I think the only issue with that box is limited outs.
there is a long winter coming so still plenty of time to play with sub placement.
had a friend who bought trios with bass horns after he heard my duos (selling his $70K) kharmas).
I never liked the basshorns in his setup. no, they had great bass but the bass was never integrated with the main speakers. he had the basshorns placed some 2 meters behind the main speakers and I guess must have had around 10 msec delay. told him to move the basshorns in front of main speakers towards the site of the room in order to time align them but that guy was too lazy to do it. ultimately he sold the trios. another thing is the basshorns are way to small to load the drivers down to 20 hz. they need a lot of eq to make then flat. for the money of the basshorns I would rather buy 2 pairs of 231 subs. just some food for thought....
again time got the better of me, but any day now I will move the subs.
Regarding the 231 I have not heard them yet. I did see someone in germany using the short basshorn G2 as a sub for Trios. This seems like a good idea if space is a little tight. But I do dream of the basshorn.
I should be moving in a year or so, so I will make sure my listening room is big enough to fit them. At the moment the room is not really big enough without some major upheaval to fit the the full basshorn in.
I'm sure your trios sound fantastic with all your tweaking. major weak point in all avantgardes is time alignment as I have mentioned before. don't move your main speaker, just the subs! and later try to find a way to move the mid and tweeter horn back.
once your have setuo avantgardes properly and tweaked them a bit it is difficult if not impossible to go back to low efficiency speakers. they all sound dynamically compressed, especially all those planars like maggies and ml.
one more thing, heard the new231 subs recently. these are quite large and in a different league than the 225 subs. in case you have some cash to burn in the future....
My feeling and experience with bypass caps is that it is a little like cooking. Some ingredients go well together and compliment each other, while some do not. I know what you mean with bypassing of certain caps. But I have also had magic...
I ran out of time to play with the subs last night, hopefully I will have time tonight. But I will let you know.
When I first got the Trios I did a lot of playing with placement, but it was building on a shifting sands at the time with many pieces of kit all running in.
I have very nice sound at the moment. I cannot imagine changing speaker ever. Famous last words... but this time I mean it!
they seem expensive but if you consider how much people spent on power cords etc they are not really that expensive. in car terms the mundorfs are in porsche 911 territory and the v-caps in F1! have not heard the duelunds so I can't comment on them.
many years ago I tried jensen copper PIO as main and small bypass cap. at that time I though the bypass cap increased low level resolution in an artificial manner and I removed it after a while. difficult for me to imagine that it will be any good bypassing the mundorf with small v-cap or duelund.
let me know how it goes with the sub placement. I think 2 feet in front of the basshorn is a good starting point
holy cow, I had forgotten how expensive the V-caps are! I priced them up today.
It does put me very close to duelund caps in there. I found when I put in duelunds before they were a little disappointing to begin with. Then after a while I was drawn to something organic and unforced when compared to the already good Mundorf silver/gold in oil. Impressive in their unimpressiveness!
I will play around with the placement of the subs tonight.
Any reason why you dont like bypasses in the cross over?
it's true the original duos used the standard supreme caps. I don't think bypassing is a good idea in speaker xo. tried it once. sounded artificial to me. if you order v-caps make sure to ask chris to put them on his cable cooker for a couple of days!!! if you do this upgrade try it on the tweeter first. the midrange cap will have a larger value ($$$) + midrange cap is not in series with the driver so so the effect will be smaller I guess.
I heard the new duo omega g2 series at a dealer in singapore recently driven by very high end tube electronics. they use the silver/gold in oils as well. co comparison with the v-cap to my ears.
removing the horns from the frame will surely have benefits since the vibration from the subs can't reach the horns. in my case I use the subs only as a stand for the frame.
let me know how you get on with the time alignment issue. you could start by putting your subs roughly 2 feet in front of your horns. the build in amp delays the signal around 2 msec! that's a long time!!
The cap upgrade is a little confusing because I know each update of the AG range they changed the caps to better quality ones. If your friend had an original duo, I know for a fact they did not use the top of the range mundorfs then (probably Mundorf supremes). So the difference would have been massive to him. Probably much less with a new one that would have the Silver/gold in oils dont you think?
I will give the Vcap a go. Maybe best to try a bypass first to see what it does. I think the largest cap is a 4uf although there is a cap across the mid horn which may be larger.
I have not tried the Vcap myself, but I have tried many including Mundorf silver in oil, Silver/gold in oils, Duelund copper VSF and many many more.
I liked mundorf metals in oils, with the Silver/gold in oil being best and the silver in oil being very good value for money. The duelund is excellent too, but with a huge price increase.
It is funny you mention sand, as I have a bag sitting in my hall way, I just have not got around to filling the stands with it yet. The Harmonix feet are said to be good. But very expensive. I was thinking of having Townshend platforms made which are said to be very good.
Regarding the time alinement I guess you could easily put a strip of metal which the tweeter could attach to with its existing holes, and then have the strip of metal bolted to the AG frame with the holes drilled to the right measurments for the alignment. A similar approach could work with the midband although probably more difficult to attach than the tweeter.
I had a friend with Duos who suspended the horns from the ceiling and got rid of the frame all together. He laid the subs on their side. He was able to put the midrange in a better position for his seating arrangement. He felt it was a great improvement.
I think replacing the mundorfs with the v-caps is a must. this will also greatly benefit the midrange ! my duos use 3,3 uF for the tweeter cap. this is the largest value v-cap makes. not sure what value is been used in the trios. for larger values you can always parallel several caps. a friend did this tweak on the original 8 ohm duos and talked about doors being opened. the difference is really amazing. much bigger than any cable change! beware of a long break in!!
I use first generation of vd master speaker cables. they sound great on the avantgardes but as you said, stiff and heavy and those damned magnets.
regarding time alignment, this is a very weak point of any avantgarde speaker. just check out stereophiles measurement of uno nano. look at the step response. tweeter arrived 0,75 msek earlier than the midrange. this is a very long time!! some time in the feature will buy trios as well. I will have to think about a mechanical construction allowing me to push the midrange and tweeter horns back. this will be much more challenging than with the duos.
the duos midrange horn does not use any xo. even though it does not produce much below 200 hz the cone is moving quite a bit with loud bass heavy music. removing the rear cap allows the drivers back wave to escape. this resulted in a more open midrange. the speaker is better disappearing. give it a try, costs nothing.
almost forgot, 2 other things I did. filling those hollow tubes with sand plus putting harmonix rf999 feet under the speaker. these feet are quite expensive but like the v-caps are worth every penny IMO
thank you for your post. Very interesting. I just post some things I hope people will find interesting or helpful, but I never know if anyone bothers to read them. So it is very nice to hear from you.
I am embarking on a new external crossover for the Trios. To be honest I had not thought of changing the Mundorf silver/gold/in oils caps that are already in there. I do like the Mundorfs.
I was going to tri wire the crossover and solder direct to the drivers with some kind of nice cable. I was about to get anal and try and energized cables like a nice Audioquest or Synergistic research internally. I tried one and it was very good.
I was also going to replace the binding posts which would be the input for the crossover with cardas ones because I use spades on my speaker cables and I prefer the way they clamp onto the spade.
I have read a fair bit about the sonics of the various binding posts, but I want a secure connection as much as the slight benefit of the sound of binding post. I use Virtual dynamics speaker cables at the moment and they are a pain to keep in place due to size and stiffness.
I thought the trio was already time aligned so I will look into that. I spent some time with digital room correction and found some interesting gains. Ultimately I ended up back with evil tube in the shape of an SET.
I am fascinated by the removal of the midrange back. What benefits did you find?
hi! I have followed this thread and your journey getting the best sound out of your trios with great interest. I'm using duos since 2000 and upgraded to omega drivers a few years ago. I'm driving my duo with a class d-amp which converts pcm directly to pwm. this amp basically is a dac, pre and power amp in one unit. less is more!
over the years I have tweaked my duos quite a bit and it is amazing how much better they can sound with some tweaking! I thought I share my findings. maybe you would like to tweak your trios a bit and find some of my tweaks useful.
the by far biggest improvement I gained by changing the mundorf silver/gold caps incl. the cpc unit in the tweeter xo with teflon v-caps. it's amazing how much music gets lost/how much dynamics get compressed in those mundorfs!
other things I have done: changing the plastic covered wbt binding post with next gen ones. changed the internal wiring to audio note soldered cables with silver solder directly onto the driver and tweeter xo built an external box for tweeter xo removed the rear plastic cap of the midrange horn.
latest tweak was building a wooden block for the tweeter cylinders and moved them back to time align tweeter with midrange. it's amazing what happens when the heights are time aligned with the midrange! with digital delay I have already time aligned the horns to my external corner subs (using the duo sub only as a stand for the horns)
System edited: Well I have traded in my DCS stack. I have not used a CD or SACD in so long due to a shift to a computer based set up. So it was time to rethink everything. While my DCS sounded fantastic, it meant I could simplify my system. Always a good thing in my experience. I tried out the new Weiss DAC and it sounded so similar to what I had, and slightly better in some areas, that by the time I sold everything including all that extra cabling needed for the DCS stack, it made it possible to get better sound by reinvesting the left overs in other areas. So enter my tricked out Yamamoto A08s all silver rewired, with Duelund VSF and Mundorf Silver/gold in oil caps and Mundorf Tube cap. Tubes are Emission Lab 45 mesh plates and an Emission Lab No 80 mesh rectifier tube. The sonics are extremely good. Very natural and open. The kind of system where thoughts of equipment are long forgotten. The system has been up and running for a couple of months now and seems to be run in, after many months of trying all sorts of equipment out. I am very happy with the changes. The Weiss DAC is exceptional. The modifications to the Yamamoto have dug out the finest detail placing a wide soundstage in front of me with super bass texture, clarity and weight. I will up load new pictures over the next few days.
there is a part of me that really doesnt want to think about how much these updates were. But the tubes alone must be $700. The caps slightly less maybe.
People say the original A08s keeps head with $10,000 amps. I would agree and even more $. This amp sounds better than the original. The word "better" is vague, but I can clarify. But lets just say more refined, wider, cleaner, more coherent...
I have no idea what I could find that would sound this good on the Trio. I have tried many. So if you add it up it is still cheap for a fine tube amp, and for tube amps I am done. The 45 tube is king if you have the sensitivity.
I might test the set waters in a separate system some day so I am very interested in how things go with others that are trying to push the edge.
My audio system strategy is to always use reference systems that push the edge as a starting point, then figure out what have to do to approach that on my budget.
As the Duelunds have burned in I have found some of the thickness in their tone has given way to a perception of depth and weight. Very nice caps. Probably the best caps I have ever used. Very natural.
And in went the Duelund coupling caps into the A08s.
I have been very happy with the work done so far on this great little amp. Each change has brought improved dynamics, better and cleaner textures, clarity, sound staging and all round just better and more refined. I believe I have retained all that made the amp great in the first place, just brought them out a little more.
I left until last the coupling caps. This was the only cap that could possibly be replaced with a duelund. With space for larger value caps at premium in other areas in the circuit it made it impossible to fit duelunds there. Here was my only chance. Besides my pockets are not that deep!
The duelund as a coupling cap has brought a wonderful solidity to the sound. There is so much harmonic texture and naturalness. I love the mundorf silver in oil and the mundorf silver/gold in oil caps, but this Duelund VSF copper leans more towards a laid back detail than the more in your face detail of the mundorf. Now when I say laid back I dont mean dull or boring. Far from it. They make music believable.
All of the caps I mentioned are great and you would not be disappointed with any of them. But if you are really anal and your taste is for an impressive and hugely involving listen maybe mundorf is your king. If you are really anal and your taste is for a solid and believable presentation with all details naturally present then get your cash out for the duelunds!
To be honest the combination of all these caps have balanced out really well and I believe I have the best of both worlds offered by mundorf and Duelund in the space provided.
Hi mapman, it depends really. Having been in studios most of my life I am no stranger to a soldering iron. I also have a good network of tech guys and some experience with certain circuits.
If I am messing around with equipment that is under warranty I do tend to be in close contact with the manufacturer. I dont tend to get into removing chips or really invasive work on boards unless really clear.
That kind of work is best left to guys that just do that. Some manufacturers are very helpful and some are not. DCS for example are especially not up for experimentation, and do not seem to believe in such hocus pocus. But something like these little tube amps are so simple. There is nothing in them! Probably why they sound so good.
