How good is the midrange in the DK Design VS-1Mk2?

Anyone have a sense of what the DK would sound like with horns? Or has anyone heard one as such? I was thinking about an in-home trial, but didn't want to go through the process if the DK really has no chance of improving on the airy transparency of the SET/horn combination. Any comments?

It will only provide provide proper dynamic range with very high efficiency speakers, most of which don,t sound good anyway.

ARE YOU KIDDING?

Actually I agree that most high efficiency speakers sound pretty crappy, although when I say high efficiency I mean standard moving coil dynamic loudspeakers. Every high efficiency standard box loudspeaker that I have heard sounded pretty bad. Horns are another story. Horns can sound amazing when done right and provide incredible dyamics and resolution. I think the DK amp might work really well on a horn system since it is an extremely quiet amplifier with a very low noise floor, which will probably sound great driving a horn. Imagine what 150W of pure power will sound like on a high sensitive horn system...my oh my. I have heard many SET amps and I think the DK has a very high chance of taking your system to another level. Please give it a try and let us know how it turns out.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Audiomat Arpege was the far better amplifier in the system that we heard both amps in.

We even rolled some NOS Seimens and Amperex in the VS1. They were a vast improvement over the stock Chinese tubes, which shows that the VS1 responds to tube rolling.

I have nothing against new posters here at AG (welcome!), but I would have a little more confidence if some more long term members would offer some input on the VS1.

As always, try to audition in your system before committing to purchase!

Good Luck guys . . .

I replaced a Sonic Frontiers Power 2 (Svetlana KT-88's, Jan Philips 6922's) with the VS.1 MKII and find the midrange is not too much different from that of the SF amp, VTL amps, and other large contemporary design push pull tube amps. The bass is definitely better. The treble is some of the least fatiguing I have heard with a solid state power amp. The soundstage dimensionality is good -comparable to the SF but not quite as good as my 300B and 2A3 SET amps. My Maggie 3.6's, which sound harsh with some solid state amps are very happy with this one. I'm using Tungsram E88CC's in the preamp section.

On a separate topic, I exchanged emails with Daniel Khesin (DK) about the class A design of the power section. I asked how a class A can run so cool, and he replied that The VS-1 Mk. 2 uses proprietary circuitry (which they obviously don't want to say too much about to their competitors).

I also asked about the power meters which are marked in watts but actually measure the input signal before the volume pot. He replied that they were evaluating the available uV meters and found this very attractive and high quality one that's marked in watts, and changing the tooling to reflect uV would have added considerably to the cost without improving the quality, so they decided to incorporate it into the design without change.

I mentioned that after hearing the DK amp in my system I plan to sell the SF Power 2, and he commented that one customer is replacing Halcros with a VS.1 MK2. Whether this is marketing hype or not, I'm very impressed with this amp. Definitely a keeper.