My Long List of Amplifiers and My Personal Review of Each!

you all surprised by my top pick??

@jays_audio_lab  Your top pick doesn't surprise me a bit. This manufacturer has been getting great show results for years. 

Very impressive. I was shocked

Not shocked at all. Joseph Audio makes amazing speakers.

Surprised that the $37k Joseph speakers blew away the $60k GTA? Not at all.

And don’t apologize for the electronics. Aren’t the Pass XS300 more expensive than the amps on the almost half-price Joseph Audio? So surely amp cost plus speaker cost the Pass/GTA cost much more than the Joseph/Emm (if Emm cost $80-90k as you said).

Congrats to faxer on 2nd place. Impressive win over JBL.

WC, for sure, bring in Joseph Audio. Don’t dump the XLF but just bring in Joseph Audio. Super clear by the praise that you heaped on it that it was by far your favorite (describing bass, layers, had everything, etc.)

WC:

if you had to pick one speaker to live with for a year:  JA Pearl or Sasha DAW?

I ended up buying the AGD Gran Vivace amps at the show. I never in a million years thought I would buy a class D amp, but these amps have opened my eyes.

Mr. Guerra has created something special, for sure. 

Sasha daw or Joseph audio? Hmmm... Hard to say because I've not owned the Joseph audios... Don't know what it is like to live with them and i know what it is like to live with the DAW so I'll say the DAW. 

robc33,

Did you A/B/C all three of his amps there?....or maybe you need the most power? or?

I have found horn speakers to not be as popular in the US versus Europe or Asia.  I am not surprised Jay liked the sound of a horn.  After owning Wilson and Sonus Faber, I went with a horn speaker from Viking Acoustics and have never looked back.  And if I ever upgrade it will be a horn speaker.  

I A/B the Audion against the Gran Vivace. The sound opened up exponentially when we switched to the Gran Vivace. I have Sonus Faber Stradivari Speakers, and have McIntosh 2301s for amps, so yes, I need the most power. 

Viking Acoustic is a brand I could totally see WC trying 

Pearl v DAW would be a great shootout 

Jay,

Your video of the Joseph Audio has 2 lousy recordings, so I can't judge them.  With your music, how did the Joseph compare with the GT Audio? 

I liked the JBL horn speakers for their clarity.  It didn't sound bright probably because the horn is large and covers a wide freq range, so you have good coherent detail.  My father's large Altec 511 horn covered 500-22kHz, so was coherent.  Later I heard the smaller Altec 811 horn which covered 800 upwards.  It was much more colored.

Did you go back to hear the tall Arion Audio  ESS-type speaker with your music?

I had Altec 511 horns in a three way speaker.....my first DIY speaker back in the 70s. That horn was super colored......every instrument sounded like a horn.....super ringy aluminum colored horn. I thought that all horns sounded that way till a little while later I was at a small stereo store in Berkeley where the guy had some K-horns set up and also had Quad Electrostats. We A/Bed the two and they were shockingly very similar.....with no "horn colorations". However, this set of K-horns was not stock. It was a nude version (unfinished) and had the tweeter mounted all the way in the rear on top of the midrange driver....essentially time. aligning the tweeter to the mids. The owner of the store told me that if he moved the tweeter back to its original position I would run out of the store it would sound so bad. Time aligning is important. I believe the JBL speakers are mid/high time aligned....or at least close. Damped super time aligned horn systems can sound outrageous. All current Klipsch speakers are NOT time aligned.....tweeter flush on front panel and midrange horn front edge also flush with front panel.....meaning the tweeter is WAY forward of the midrange. Not good for coherence and imaging. When I made my three way with the Altec horn the Electrovoice horn tweeter was right in the front....on top of the midrange horn. Dang speaker was so bright I was stuffing cotton in the mid horn and in front of the tweeter. Learned a lot since then.

Stay in the love and joy......remember your essence.  Be happy and at peace with yourself and others.

Viber, just rewatch Jays 3 best rooms video. He goes on and on praising the JA speakers with tons of specific detail. Amazing clarity, layers of sound, incredible bass, amazing soundstage and on and on.

when he talks about GTA he doesn’t do any of that and mostly makes excuses for them. You have to read between the lines with WC.

if he likes the GTA speakers at all he will purchase them. Let’s see if he does. That will tell the story initially. If he really likes them, they will stay in his room for 2-3 months or more.

of his top three speakers of show, WC talked extensively about purchasing both the Joseph Audio and the JBL speakers (or another horn) and bringing them into his room.

By contrast, as to any future interest with GTA he said he’d like to lug his 200 lb amps into the show to hook to the GTA to replace the Pass Labs electronics that faxer used which WC could barely hide his disdain for (talk about throwing Pass Labs under the bus as not worthy). No hint that he’d ever consider purchasing, which for someone who goes through 75 components per year doesn’t take much interest for him to acquire (pretty low bar with WC - if he likes at all he buys it to try it) says a lot as to his level of interest   
 

Maybe I'm wrong and WC will buy GTA, but I doubt it after watching the videos .  But let's see

so again, with WC it’s about context and reading between the lines. If you need me to spell it out more clearly than this for you I can but rewatch the video, read this post and you’ll get your answer

One key reason why i wouldn't buy GT audio is because of the real estate they take up. It doesn't work in my room unfortunately. They need space and i have a big screen behind that i don't want to get rid of. 

There you go, Viber. WC has no interest in purchasing GTA speakers even after demoing them under the dealer’s guidance.

Too big the proffered reason but of course he had no issue purchasing Martin Logan Neoliths (which were much bigger for the space he had then than GTA would be for this room) and Magnepan 20.7 for this room.

So read between the lines. He threw faxer a bone and interviewed him for 10 minutes which will get a lot of views and for people looking for $60k speakers that take up as much space as they do and require the huge subwoofers and dedicated amps, I’m sure they’ll consider those speakers, perhaps thanks to the attention WC gave faxer and the speaker.  Viber, have you placed your order for the GTA speakers yet?

No, the GTA is second best for clarity only compared to my electrostatics.  I will hear the latest version of the GTA soon at Steve's house. There is a tradeoff between size and sonic purity.  Very tall panels are not as well time aligned compared to shorter panels, but certainly tall panels give more dynamics and SPL capability.  Still, the GTA offers most people the best balance of all sonic qualities, IF their room can accommodate them.  In a smaller room, the main panel has significant output down to 40 Hz, so most music is reproduced excellently without  need of the subs.  With the previous model I heard last year with the subs off, I could hear a soft 37 dB note clearly. The relatively narrow panel is room friendly.  A tall ceiling is an asset for best performance.

Ricevs speaks the truth about the importance of time alignment.  I agree that the JBL Everest looks time aligned.  Henry201 had an excellent post recently about the lack of time alignment in most speakers, referring to an old Stereophile article from John Atkinson.  Even the best time alignment isn't so great, since there is a relatively long delayed output from speaker cabinet resonances, etc.  However, simple re-alignment of individual drivers improves the time alignment although not perfectly.  This is the great contribution of Dave Wilson in his upper end models, confirmed by my recent experience better aligning my Enigmacoustics tweeter with my main speaker, and ricevs' experience with the K-horn modified for better time alignment, and his Altec horn with the Electrovoice tweeter.

Jay,

Don't rule out GTA in your room just yet.  My room is cluttered with all my years of accumulated stuff.  No doubt if I had a dedicated listening room the sound would be better, but even with my limitations, the speakers do the talking (I like Mike Fremer's phrase).  You could still place the GTA panels approximately where you have the XLF's.  The panels are reasonably narrow.  You could get only 2 subs per side to have a less cluttered room, and placement of the subs is less critical than for the panels.  But the GTA sonic purity and all the other qualities you seek would overcome the slight limitations you have. 

The Joseph Audio is certainly more room friendly, but how did the clarity compare with the GTA on your music?  How about the tall Arion Audio ESS speaker on your music?

It is too bad that WC disqualified most of the speakers he heard at the show from even making his ratings due to the presenters only playing crappy music.  Would have been nice to hear who the winners would have been without that major limitation.  Kudos to the presenters who were flexible and played requests.

Viber, 

i will not be buyiing GT Audio speakers because i have to sell and move on from everything i have here. I dont want to do that to Steve and Greg (lisiting their speaker after owning it for some time). Why don't you buy their speakers since you seem to hang on to equipment for decades? 

I also do not want a turntable because i dont want to deal with the extreme fuzziness of having to clean records, leveling stuff, having to go out and buy music and all the associated effort that comes with owning a turntable. I dont have the time to do this. I would rather buy a cd player before i own a turntable because a cd player is more plug and play. 

It is always difficult to evaluate speakers with unknow music in a room that one is not familiar with.  I've been to many audio shows and I almsot always bring a CD-R and a thumb drive with files.  In a decent percentage of cases, many vendors are either not equiped to playback your music or just don't want to take the time.  I went to RMAF in 2017 and at the Denver Tech Center, the hotel's wifi wouldn't work for more than the first day.  I've also been to shows and have gotten told make an appointment after hours.  When you're told that from a half dozen rooms (or more at a show and I have been to those), by the time you get back from dinner and catching up with people you know, sometimes one is lucky if they can get to hear a couple of songs in one room.  When the show is a few days, it means that maybe you can get to a quick listen at a couple of rooms.  So the point is how does one evaluate that?  If I bring my music and I hear 10 rooms I like and 7 of them don't allow me to play it, then I can only make very general assumptions and not have an apples to apples comparison.

I don't want to deal with a turntable either.  There are some rooms which are set-up for vinyl.  Nothing wrong with that with the exception if that's where most or all of your room is equiped to do, then a portion of your potential base is left out.  It is much like buying a house in a 55+ community.  Generally, there are more maintenance costs and facilities, which some may not use.  When one goes to sell, a decent percentage of the potential buyers are excluded due to the restrictions.

To hear your own music, and not have a room full of people talking, scout your rooms Friday and Saturday, then be ready at the opening on Sunday. Sunday is the least attended day, the rooms sound their very best, and you have less traffic to contend with.

Let me respond to these posts. First of all the room we had was taken due to the Covid situation we wanted a 35 x 65 room which was the largest room available at capital audio fest. We were legitimately concerned for everyone's safety and that was first and Paramount. This gave us the ability to have a lot of attendees come into our room and feel comfortable that they could maintain a 6 foot social distance. We had a party Saturday night and as a result we still had over 50 people in that room Jay is my witness and everybody had enough room still to spread out. There was no speaker at that show that could produce the volume levels and the bass that the GT speakers could produce in that room you can ask Jay and he can verify that he experienced it for himself. Due to the lack of crossover in the main panels you do not get phase shift, time delay errors and loss of power to the amplifier due to inefficiency that crossovers inherently produce, that coupled to the fact we were putting 2000 DSP Watts into those woofers really lit the room up. I had an in-depth discussion with Jay and he will confirm that if we were to put those Joseph speakers in that 35 x 65 room it would be an embarrassment. This does not mean that the speakers will not work in a smaller room as Jay experienced in Axpona. I don’t know where people are getting the fact that we were using Pass XS300s we were not-we were using 160.8 pass amplifiers. The speakers do not take a year to get I don’t know where you people are getting that if you listen to the video carefully I indicated that some of our competition are taking up to a year we are not. To be honest we are extremely back ordered but will get the speakers to our customers in a reasonable period of time.

Again I will say one thing we can put more expensive amplifiers on our speakers and yes it probably will increase the performance as Jay indicates but everything has a price point. I do respect Jays opinions and respect his keen reviewers ear.

However, we have a great deal of other reviewer’s who feel that the pass amplifiers make the speakers sound incredible and allow customers to purchase amplifiers that are not mega buck. I am sure Jay is correct and his assessment that if we had the Gryphon amplifiers on our speakers that we could have conceivably taken first position. We still make the challenge that: anybody can bring their speakers to our show room for a direct head to head comparison. We love challenges, all this talk on this blog doesn’t mean anything until you put the same speakers with the same equipment in the same room and do the evaluation-everything else is just essentially pontification.

This forum is about WC’s room dude. And he has decided not to buy the speakers after you gave your best shot. Everything else is just pontification.

WC gave you some free advertising with the video, but at the end of the day he judged the speakers not worthy of purchase. Size and resale value were his reasons, but again, that never stopped him from purchasing and loving ML Neoliths and Magnepan 20.7.

So there it is. Time to move on and focus on stuff that makes the cut to be in WC’s room, not stuff that doesn’t.

Edit: and I stand corrected on the XS300 comment, my bad on that.

Well I will say is whatever speakers that you think are better take my challenge we will put them head-to-head regardless of what anybody else says.

Jay indicated why he cannot put the speakers into the room due to room constraints. You are misleading the forum by your comments that he does not want the speakers. 
Bottom line if you listen to what he says in the video he clearly indicated that we probably could've been in first position had it not been for the pass labs which he felt could have been improved upon with the Gryphon.

no other manufacturer will offer this above challenge. We are confident in the technology and what the speakers can do. You’ve had nothing but bad things to say about us from the get-go in this forum you have some sort of hard on for us and just in plain English you are just a hater.

Have nothing against the speakers. Good luck with them. But they aren’t going in WC’s room (unless you comp him a freebie) so advertise elsewhere.

This thread is about WC’s room and the stuff worthy of his purchase and display in the room, period. That is the thing I’ve been saying to you and Viber when it comes to GTA speakers all along, which is why I always said stop advertising and promoting until WC determines they are worthy for his room.

If they are good enough to be in the room, they will be (most hi end brands eventually are). If they aren’t, then they aren’t and it’s WC’s call. Pretty simple. His purchasing decisions always tell the tale.

Not misleading anybody, not a hater. Only being proven right in my prediction. By contrast you told me 8-10 months ago that when WC heard your speakers he’d be blown away and he’d buy them and they’d be in his room and I’d have to eat my words. I’ll take the high road and avoid any name calling and just let the results speak for themselves as far as that goes.

And like I said in earlier post I'm sure they must sound good if WC liked them enough to give 2nd place ahead of JBL, so congrats again on that.

Limited to evaluating systems via YouTubes. When I was going through the posted videos I was stopped dead in my tracks by the Arion/AR room. Seems they did have a great recording of a drum kit with gong on vinyl. But, even on MP4, I have never heard drums and, especially, the gong as real. I was floored and did not want to continue listening to any more videos from CAF.

Surely, made me think that some day I would buy the Arions. And they are reasonable priced at about $25K...relatively.

Kren you have to understand that Jay was so impressed with the speakers and the technology that he decided to do an interview with me. His amazement with the speakers caused him to do an interview with me not any other manufacturer because of the fact he was so impressed with them and did not expect to hear this type of sound in such a big room .I will tell you on a stack of Bibles that this was not planned and was completely impromptu. This was done because Jay was extremely impressed and blown away by some of the songs we played. You are misleading this forum by stating that if the speakers were that good he would have them. This is not true because he had indicated if you care to read what he wrote that he cannot handle a four piece system in his room. The speakers that you are referring to the Martin Logan and Magnaplanar are not a 4 Piece system. As you know Jay has a home theater screen and that is important to him and does not want to put anything in front of the screen.

I have never said anything different other than me not being able to accommodate the GT Audio speakers in my room due to the space needed to make them sing. I chose them as the second best in show because that is where they deserved to be in my opinion of course. I also can't place them here because i have a channel to run and you should all know by now that everything ends up being sold. I love the enthusiasm from GT Audio and i truly believe their speaker can sing even better as long as better electronics are used. It doesn't matter how good a speaker design is; the speaker can only be as good as what is connected behind them. You can buy an 8k OLED TV and it won't look great nor will you see its full potential If you are playing VHS tapes through it. 

Alright, alright got it.

(But actually the first reason you listed to Viber as to why you wouldn’t buy is because you’d have to resell after listening to them for a little bit (like everything else))

Jay,

Even if your room is not ideal for the GTA speakers (neither was the showroom you heard them in), you will get better sonic quality in every parameter than if you brought in a more room friendly speaker and set them up perfectly.  So how did the GTA compare in clarity with the Joseph Audio?

Is running your channel more important to you than satisfying your quest for the best possible sound for your musical pleasure?  You know that I dislike Pass electronics from my personal experience and from your videos, but the GTA is the only system I have heard that sounds great with Pass stuff.  You implied this also on your video with Steve.  

When you eventually sell the Wilson XLF, everyone will know that you enjoyed your life with it, and that you haven't necessarily found anything better.  The same will apply with the GTA.  You won't have much difficulty selling the GTA, because your YT viewers will have experienced great sound from it, no matter what ancillary components you have used with it.  The GTA is so low in distortion and natural that any cheap component will sound decent with it.  Of course, better components will be appreciated and there will be greater differences with the GTA than most other speakers.

I said in the past and currently that I am not buying the GTA because my speaker is still the champ for clarity.  It is wrong for people to question my integrity and endorsement of GTA just because I have something better for my needs.  The GTA is the only speaker I would buy if my present speakers deteriorated.

So then you’re saying a 20 year old speaker is better to your ears than a new gt audio...

Ok Viber, it's time...post a video of your system on YouTube...i need to hear it. 

I hope you get another 20 years out of them.