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.
Hi Charles, The way I see SET amplification now isn't that (at least in my simple system) it is the best at every audiophile attribute, although it is very good to excellent at most. It's more of a discovery for me in the sense of understanding the flow and swell of music, and being able to aurally individuate its parts easily so that I can understand intent of the writer and performer better. I fully understand that it is not going to be the answer for every music lover, but it has turned out to be the right thing for me, and I thank you and others on this forum for encouraging me to explore it.
Charles, I wanted to update you on the break in of the black treasure 300b tubes as well as today's upgrade. The 300b's have broken in beautifully as you and others said they would. I don't know if they are all the way there yet but I am certainly satisfied The bigger news is that I called Andy Bowman at vintage tube services for advice on the best 6sn7 and also rectifier tube upgrade that I xuold get, and they arrives today. They are both RCA. The 6sn7 from the 1940s and the rectifier RCA from the 1960s. I am shocked by the improvement as Andy said I would be, and honestly did not know the amp was capable of this level of performance. I am a happy guy, and once again, I want to give Andy credit, and recommend him to anyone needing vintage tubes for his good advice and honesty.
Thaluza, Thank you for your feedback on the break in of the Black Treasure 300b tubes in your system. I appreciate it and yours as well as Charles, and I will keep you posted on the changes as time passes.
Charles, Well, I received the Black Treasure 300b z tubes yesterday, and plugged them in last night. Thankfully, I was prepared for a bumpy ride regarding break-in, because it looks like that's the way it will be. So far, the good: Larger sonic "picture" More robust bass, which was needed Seems to be more linear in the vocal range And the bad: At this point, no where near the crystalline clarity of the stock tubes in the mid and treble Compared to what I am accustomed to with the other tubes (lower end Shuguangs),instrumental separation is not so good at this point, and depth is also truncated. Sound could be characterized as energetic, with less drag, or overhang (hard to put in words what I mean here), but rather opaque sounding, which was surprising. What I am missing most so far (because it is nearly absent) are the delicate nuances I have come to expect from this amp, and the information it gives me about the subtle volume shifts in voices and instruments, as well as timbral information, and the shaping of notes that I routinely heard before. That sounds like a lot of complaints, but as I said in the beginning, from what I have read, I have a couple of hundred hours to go before I can make any definitive judgments about these tubes, so I will be patient, and see how they settle in.
Rebbi, I agree with other posters in thinking that you should not give up on your new amp, but change your speakers. As you know, I use Klipsch Epic CF-4s, but I also have 2 pair of Celestion monitors, the Kingston and the SL6si. both of those are about 86db efficiency, and are woefully underpowered by the Kit 1 sad to say. I heard that it might work, but it didn't. When I want to listen to them, I listen with Mac solid state in a smaller system. Concerning the power cords, I use the better Pangeas from Audio Advisor for the whole system, but they do fortify the bottom end, but not drastically. If I had the funds, I would experiment with other brands, but the price/value quotient of the Pangeas is very good. I suppose I also am prejudiced concerning the DeCapos. I bought them after reading so many positive things about them, and set a new personal record for how quickly I got rid of them. I found them to be kind of plummy and dominant in the bass, and not very coherent...personal taste. If I didn't have what I have, I would buy Coincident.
Agear, I only know him through these forums, not personally, but a good while back, I did start missing his posts. I think he jumped in and said he was otherwise occupied at that time. I always liked reading his opinions. Audio Purgatory...yes, I have put myself there too many times making bad buying decisions for really silly reasons. In the last three years, I have become much more focused on my system priorities. I still make mistakes though. I made a BIG one in the beginning of the year. Since I liked my Klipsch Epic speakers, and I had some bonus money in my pocket, I decided to buy a pair of speakers that I thought were basically the same type of speaker, but probably better. They were the JBL Array 1400. They received a great review from Stereophile and many users, so I thought why not? I bought them here on Audiogon used for a great price and they came in perfect condition. Unfortunately, they didn't sound nearly as good to me or other friends familiar with my system as the Epics do. I was really unable to get any offers when I listed them here on Audiogon, but I was finally able to find a buyer in Romania on Ebay, and I recouped my money at least. Lesson learned: When it comes to the big expensive stuff, try to hear it first if possible. In this case, I really made the effort, but there was no place to hear them. I shouldn't have done it. But, as you can see, based on my unreliable intuition, I did it again with the SET amp, although this time, the advice was from several people whom I trusted, not Larry Greenhill. It was a good move.
Charles and Islandman, I'm in agreement with everything you said. Again, it is still easy for me to understand differing tastes, but I feel lucky to have found something that I was able to give me a clearer insight into the the meaning of the music that I listen to.
Thanks Charles, I am not delusional; and I realize that I have neither the resources nor the space to recreate music in a full scale facsimile of reality. Many argue that no one can, but there are many super systems that make a heroic and impressive attempt, and I think that's great. What I have realized over the last few years is that I personally don't need the ultimate in bandwith extension or hyper resolution. With an SET amp, I have found that an organically cohesive musical picture that is more revealing of artistic intent and instrumental nuance is more than enough for me. By the way, I did buy the Jupiter copper foil caps and send them to the builder. I have no idea of how it would have sounded with the stock Mundorfs, but I will take the word of you and others that it was the right thing to do. Next up of course will be tube rolling; but I'm too poor for that at the moment.
Hi Charles, This posting will stand in place of a review of the specific SET amp that I bought, and have been using for the last couple of months. Charles was aware that I had bought an Audio Note Kits Kit One 10th Anniversary 8 watt SET 300b integrated amp kit, which I had professionally built bt Digital Pete, who is officially sanctioned by Audio Note Kits. I am really not qualified as many others on these forums to write a "review" of this amp that would be useful in a comparative way, since I have never owned an SET amplifier before. I have owned several modest push-pull tube amplifiers (Fisher, Quicksilver and DeHavilland) for periods of time, but I have spent many more years with solid state, and several brands of that as well, but mostly McIntosh, as that was what I found most satisfying for my tastes over the years and with all of the diferent speakers I used. I think that as a listener who has not experienced an SET amplifier before, it might be more useful for me to describe the differences that I perceive with this type of amplifier as compared to bipolar solid state and push -pull tube amplifiers that I have used in the past. So many of us are curious about low power SET amplifiers, and it's easy to understand. We all know that from a spec sheet standpoint, they are a mess, and yet... so many who own them swear by their superior musicality. I was really curious about them for a long time, but I was generally very happy with my Mac, and besides that, many of the speakers that I was using were not ideally suited to such a low powered amp. Then about 6 years ago, after owning some really nice speakers (e.g. TDL, Spendor, Celestion, Nestorovic, Focus Audio, JBL and more), I bought a pair of used Klipsch Epic CF-4 on a lark based on a consumer review that I read. (I bought a new pair of Klipschorns in 1976) They turned out to be really excellent, and had fewer bothersome faults than most other speakers I had owned. High efficiency, coherence and very good dynamics were 2 of the good points. It took a while to dawn on me that this might be the time to try an SET. Before I did though, I decided to replace my Mac 2105 with a Mac 402, thinking more and newer would be better. That wasn't the case for me, and I was really disappointed in the result. Obviously, I didn't need all of that power for speakers with an eficiency of 102db, and I started thinking that maybe the belief that some audiophiles have about the first watt being the most important could be true. I sold that Mac (but kept the 2105...classic) and decided to take the chance on SET. I was influenced in my decision by you Charles, as I share the sonic preferences that you express, and I also had bought my second Audio Note DAC, and was in love with it. I guess you could fairly say that I buy into the Audio Note philosophy in general. I only mention this because there are so many good brands of SET amps, many beyond my financial means, and I made the decision based on past good experience with Audio Note. I want to start by saying that I can still understand now, as I did before, that the SET experience, like anything else in audio, will not be for everyone. It certainly is right for me. The differences that I have experienced are not really what I was expecting. I think what I was expecting was a soft, flowing, very organic sound, with timbre that was far superior to what I was hearing with my vintage Mac. That was not really the case. My Mac had very good timbre. I was also expecting, and willing to accept weaker, less defined bass. That was the surprise. The lowest bass compared to good solid state is in fact a bit less defined, but the payoff, and again this may be very specific to the interaction between this amp and my speakers, is that the mid bass is so much more informative of the rhythm and pace of the music. I had never heard this before, and had no idea that I was missing anything. More to the point, I didn't realize how important this was to my understanding of the music. I make no pretense of having even a rudimentary knowledge of electronics, but it makes me think that the things that I have read about the bad effects of negative fedback may be more important than I thought before. I was also expecting somewhat rolled off high frequencies, but I have not noticed that , and I am very satisfied with the treble performance. Of course, everyone describes SET midrange as being great, and certainly, solid state that I have heard including Mac sounds somewhat opaque compared to this, and there is a large and immediately noticable difference in the amount of ambience exposed in recordings, making the Mac sound dried up by comparison. There is no syrup in the sound. Voices and instruments are very clean, pure and well seperated from one another. So now, after having tried to describe the "sound" of the SET experience, I will try to explain in brief why it had changed the way I experience recorded music, and why , like some others, I don't have a desire to go back to where I have been. If I had to describe the difference between this and all other amps that I have listened to, including the tube amps, it would be this: With other amps, there is a forward motion to the music. In a way, it's almost as if the amp is dictating the speed of that forward motion, although I never noticed that before owning this one. Of course, all music has it's own forward motion, but with this amp, and I guess SET in general, the music seems to "unfold" before me, and inner rhythms and timing cues created by bass lines, pianos, strummed guitars etc., are exposed in a way that is new to me, and very musically engaging. I used to think of musical improvements to my system as consisting of more treble, or more bass, or more depth and detail. I am for sure getting some more exposure of musical detail now, but as it has turned out, that was not by a long shot the most enjoyable thing that I have been getting from my SET experience. I want to thank Charles, and several others for relaying their experiences, which gave me the guidance and courage to persue this path. Thanks Charles and everyone else. John
Charles, Don't feel bad. It's impossible to criticize your system, so I guess he had to criticize your photography. I'm not a photography connoisseur, but it looks fine to me. As far as your system is concerned, it's always one of my favorites on Audiogon.
Charles and Grannyring, Being a user of the Apprentice as well as the SP 101, I drool when I look at pictures of the Backstage, imagining what it would do for my system. It must be truly magical. If only I could afford one! Until that unlikely day, I will appreciate my other Starsound platforms.
Miguel, Miguel, I am not sure of the weight capacity either. Obviously, it isn't going to break, but excess weight might affect the points on the brass cones. As Charles suggested, ask Robert. Remember too that if you are looking for maximum sonic effect, the SP-101 is the higher end model (Stage as Charles said is the highest). The SP-101 is supported by 3 precision machined stainless steel towers filled with special micro beads and with large brass cones screwed into their base. Robert did tell me that the less costly platforms were backwards engineered from the SP-101.
Himiguel, It appears that you are a skilled designer who probably has a good set of ears as well. Have you considered trying the Apprentice platforms in your own system? I would really be curious as to your opinion. And price wise, it is not much money considering the value of your system.
Charles, I remember way back in your system thread suggesting the SP 101 platforms to you for your speakers (which I know and love). At that time, you were concerned about the stability factor, and did not want to go that route. I recall being really happy to read some time later that you had changed your mind, because I knew what a profound improvement you were experiencing. It is really great to be able to find a few people on the forums whose opinions you can trust. I have taken that chance over the years, and have realized some great improvements as a result. I will never move away from Starsound to another brand for speaker or component supports.
In the desert of audio gimmicks, Starsound is an oasis of truth based on real science. I was reading what Bol1972 was saying the other day in a thread about expensive power cords. He is very passionate about the way that certain high end cords have a profound positive effect on music systems. I feel the same way about Starsound products, and I would be curious to know if he has ever tried them. Incidentally, there is a review of the Apprentice rack on the Home Theatre Review site, and the reviewer finds the Apprentice to be superior to the top of the line Stillpoints.
Carles, I was told by Robert at Starsound a few months ago that reviews that put the Apprentice at the Stillpoints level or better were in the works, but haven't seen any yet.
08-18-13: Charles1dad Given the considerable price gap between the Apprentice and the Stillpoints(particularly the Ultra) I suspect two different buyer groups.However with the known effectiveness of the Apprentice it`d be interesting purely on a performance/result basis. Charles
That is also my basis of interest. Stillpoints Ultra seem to be the current gold standard in isolation devices, and I would be curious to see if their performance is indeed superior or inferior to the Sistrum products.
Two things...First, I want to affirm what Agear said, and I forgot to mention. I was told when I got the Sistrum speaker platforms that they would need some days to settle in by Robert, which in my mind, I did not believe. He specifically mentioned that I would perceive that the bass was in some way diminished. Well, surprise, it was true. It was about 5 days before I realized the amazing difference the platforms made, although there was a very noticeable one from the day they were installed. Now, at the risk of being thought completely nuts, I will say that the same thing has occurred with the Apprentice platform underneath my transport. I was a little underwhelmed for the first few days, but as of yesterday, I can easily hear the differences (improvements) from the next room. It is really impossible to describe the relaxed sense of organization and flow, as well as previously hidden gradations of volume and other nuances that appear when vibration is drained away from a component efficiently. Second, I too would be very interested in a head to head comparison between the Apprentice platforms and the much vaunted Stillpoints, especially the ultra.
I know that I have sounded like a paid shill on these forums since I got my SP101 platforms, but now you know why. I sincerely believe that anyone that does not use the SP 101 or the Apprentice platforms has not heard what their speaker is capable of. Congrats Charles, and enjoy the music.
Understood. Stability is less of a factor for me because my speakers are wider and I have no kids in the house. I also wanted to mention that the Apprentice under my transport has finally banished one of my biggest issues with my all-digital system; the sound of pianos. I always perceived a ringing in piano notes, almost regardless of the recording, that really annoyed me. It is now 95% gone, and for me, that is a very big plus, as I very much enjoy jazz piano.
Charles1dad, That is great. I'm confident that if Robert recommends it, you will be more than happy. More than ever before, your speakers will disappear. More than that, vibrational energy being efficiently drained to ground has the effect of clarifying all of the frequencies as well as giving the perception of more fluid rhythms and less overhang. I used outriggers like you in the past, and they were effective, but this is a different and higher degree of improvement. I will be anxious to hear what you experience with them.
Charles1dad, I am so happy to hear that you took the leap and bought the Apprentice supports. I just did the same for under my Pioneer PDS-95 transport, and the improvement was immediately noticeable, even though that transport is heroically built. That said, the biggest difference by far will be the Sistrum beneath your speakers. You will kick yourself for not doing it sooner. If you can afford it, the SP 101 platforms are the way to go, as they are the fullest realization of the mechanical grounding, vibration draining concept. They make a huge difference, and Robert at Starsound is a great guy. You have a super system, much better than my own, and it deserves it.
What I learned from my experience with the Sistrum SP-101 supports is that it is not so important how non-resonant your speaker enclosure is. What is more important is how the support it is on drains the resonances to ground. Before I had the supports, my speakers never disappeared as sources of sound. Now, I experience it routinely.
Charles1dad, I didn't mean to sound pushy. If you have young children, and they are permitted in your listening room, then I can fully understand your concern. If that is not the case, and it is only yourself or other responsible adults, then your concerns are unfounded. Glad to hear that you are loving them under your amps. If only more people knew about these supports, and what they can really do for a system.
Charles1dad, Now that you have experienced the difference that the sistrum racks make supporting your amps, aren't you curious about what they would do under your speakers? I know what a pain it would be to try, but I think that it would be worth it.
Charles1dad, I have sung the praises of the Sitrum SP-101 speaker supports before, and I will continue to do so. They are no BS, and make a truly amazing difference. I am familiar with the sound of your speakers, and I think they are great. I will go out on a limb, and say that you have not heard their potential without these stands, and as another member posted, no cones or spikes will do the same job. As Grannyring said, I too will never use my speakers without them, and because they have the three upward -facing cones which can be moved, they can be adjusted to fit about any speaker. The designer himself told me that the SP-101 is the real deal, and the simpler stands were reverse engineered to fit a price point. This is a solid case of painfully expensive, but worth the pain.
