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RE: Help me pick SET monoblocks

Posted by morricab (S) on August 24, 2017 at 02:45:14

In Reply to: RE: Help me pick SET monoblocks posted by RGA on August 23, 2017 at 15:04:37:

First, I can assure you I have no axe to grind with AN...especially not their electronics. Their speakers fail to live up to the hype from my and a lot of my colleagues ears. Second, you have never heard an Odeon speaker, have you? I can assure you that the company is not suffering from having no presence in the US...they just launched a new line of very expensive speakers. The speakers in question, the Rigoletto, has a powerful bass such that my friend does not use his big SVS sub anymore, which he used to use with his Reference 3a speakers. I, on the other hand, have head AN speakers many times as we have a local dealer and have heard all levels of E. I know very well the differences about which I speak and you do not.

Third. what you think of the Einstein is immaterial and it is a very good sounding preamp that is widely regarded and highly respected...what Fred Crowder did doesn't concern me...maybe he has a lot of money and was bored? I never said it was the best preamp but it is a fundamentally transparent and dyanmic preamp that is also well balanced tonally. So your comment is way off base regardig the Einstein preamp...it is a good preamp...very good.

Fourth, the Einstein was used with all amps except the Oto Sig...this means that the other two amps were on the same footing as the KR audio amp. We did not feed the Einstein into the Oto for gain reasons...plus that is not how he would have used the Oto if he would have wanted to keep it. Oto doesn't have a preamp bypass like the LM219ia so you have to go through the integrated input, which means now two selector switches and two volume controls in the signal path...not the best idea if it can be avoided.

Now, with that out of the way I will continue.

The whole shootout occurred because a friend of mine was thinking about buying one of the three AN amps in question. He already owned the KR Audio amp. He wanted me to come over and help him decide which, if any, of the three AN amps he should keep.

We were comparing SET amps (Oto is wired in triode so it is a triode amp that is using pentodes wired in triode) on sensitive, easy load speakers. No apologies need to be made for the type of SET.

Your question is pretty silly. Of course different output tubes will have different signatures. What you don't seem to get is that a designer can make a 300B sound like pretty much anything he wants. I have heard 300Bs sound lean and tight, warm and mushy, bold and powerful, soft and delicate and so on. This far outweighs the selection of the tube and if someone prefers a given tube from the same designer it is probably due to the way the amp was designed rathe than the tube type.

Given that the P1SE and the Oto are nearly the same amp and they sounded profoundly different mainly because of the output transformer and perhaps the passive parts upgraded as well. You would not know they both used an EL84 based on sound alone. I have heard 211 amps sound incredibly transparent and open and warm and woolly. You would have never thought they both used 211s heard blind. A NAT SE1 sounds nothing at all like a Kondo Ongaku.

I have an Aries Cerat Diana integrated amp that is using DHP (direct heated pentodes, wired in triode) and all three tubes can be biased independently and over a reasonably wide range. You can shape the sound how you like practically. This is the one of the most transparent amps I know of and with authority that I never heard from any 25 watt amp...the LM219 is a toy by comparison (sonically and literally).

People tend to fall in love with a particular implementation of a given tube and then tend to stretch that over the whole of implementations of that tube. This is a false way to think of this. You don't care all that much for AN 300B designs but they should not be taken as representative of ALL 300B designs...they are not.

Sure, some characteristics are present but they are swamped by design in most cases for the final sound...especially the output transformer.

People like the 45 sound because the output transformer requirements are modest so it is easier to make a good output transformer that leads to better sound. 211 is a pain because it has high impedance and needs a lot of iron and then very special winding techniques not to lose hte highs. A 45 has not such concerns. NAT makes a very transparent sound 211 amp. Aries Cerat uses the 813, which is a bit transmitting pentode and their amps are even more transparent...OTL like but without the OTL tonal signature. However, this requires an 18Kg (yes 18) output transformer and very special winding to keep the high frequency resolution and extension.

There is so much you are simply ignorant about in amp design that you then have no choice but to oversimplify with "this tube type sounds like this and that one sounds like that etc."

I have said many times that ANs amps with their bigger C core trannies sound a lot better than the ones with their shitty little EI core trannies. Not that EI core is bad...many companies make very good ones...but AN uses tiny little things that are not able to maintain low distortion in the bass and create a muddy resolution and overly warm tone. Tubes are not inherently "warm" sounding...this is largely an artifact of design.

A 211 amp costs a lot to make mainly because it requires a larger power supply and needs much larger output transformers with special winding to deal with the large core and a lot of wire to deal with the high impedances (around 10K ohms) that 211s have. 300Bs have a much lower impedance, much lower current requirements and because of lower power a much smaller core output tranny.

"At the AN Dealer in HK I have auditioned 300B and 2A3 back to back - both amps are basically the exact same price - same size - other than the tube you'd think it was the same product. And they are night and day different sounding and they each do some things better than the other - and you make your choice. "

Again, down to design more than the output tube. It is probably possible to make them sound very similar but then why would you want to do that if you are trying to offer people sound choices?

"You want to do amp comparisons - you compare an 8 watt AN 300B to a brand X 8 watt 300B (using the exact same tubes) with the exact same cables at the exact same volume level because AN and other 300B will have different gain characteristics. It's BS comparing EL84 and 300B and 211 and whatever else."

How is that any more BS than you comparing a 300B and 2A3 from AN? Hint, it's not. In that system, with those ancillaries and those speakers it was a perfectly valid comparison...in the end the KR stayed and the three AN amps sent packing. An Ayon 300B amp was also sent packing. We set the levels to be equal...nothing more need be done but let the amps speak for themselves.

"although I have heard the OTO Sig and the The Tube Preamp and the Ayon so I would argue that as well)."

You haven't heard them together and with these speakers.

"Audio Note designs their 300B to work specifically FOR Audio Note speakers."

Do they? What a bunch of nonsense...

Finally, as I said, the Oto was not bad at all but not the equal of the KR when driven either with the Einstein or directly from the Golden Atlantic; however, the owner fully intends to use the Einstein as that brings more to the sound overall. The P1SE and Conqueror tells what happens when an inadequate output transformer is used...boring.

I know you are a fanboy...but really?

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