New H20 Signature S250

Hi guys. The Signature upgrade is definitely worth it. I'm one of Henry's original "launch customers" and early last year purchased three of his S250s for tri-amping my Apogees. Well after a few months I started bugging Henry to try taking the S250 to the max..a signature version. After several months of phone calls and strategizing, he came up with stacked transformers, better caps, faster diodes, silver wiring plus other goodies. Right around X-mas, Henry said he was ready to give it a try so I sent my three amps back to act as guinea pigs. They had turned the 500-hour corner and were really opening up so I was a bit hesitant but boxed them up.

Boy am I glad I did! I'm at about the 1000-hour mark on these guys and they are definitely more open and transparent than the originals. The bass in particular is now very tight but bouncy and meaty too. I feel no need or desire to re-install my Tact amps and this is very high praise indeed. Excellent all the way around.

They DO need lots of break in. Henry actually sent me new amps as he really liked how the others sounded and wanted to use a couple of them as demos (which people keep wanting to buy!). Right out of the box I really didn't care for them but I knew better. I break amps in by running TV sound and cable fm thru them 24/7 so I can build up hours fast. After 100-150 hours their tonal balance settled in but the imaging was vague. At the 300-hour mark, things were much more organized but also still a bit "dark". The next time I listened to them seriously was at about 600 hours. Man what a difference! Very open & dynamic. And now at the 1000 hour mark they are superb and very artifact free with that sense of reality that the Tact amps have when driven via their digital inputs but with a DRIVE the Tacts don't have via the big Aps.

Like the Tact amps these guy really do benefit from being plugged into my PS Audio P-600 and then individually fed thru an ultimate outlet.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll get the chance to here one of them driving a friends big Sound Labs (currently being fed by the Parasound JC-1s). That should be interesting.

Jeff

Well I took one of my S250 Sigs and a Tact S2150 over to my buddy Larry's place yesterday for a listen thru his, yet again, newly refurbished Sound Lab M-1s. The upgrades included a new membrane & stators (26 vs 20 per cell), new floor coupling structure and reworked/wired interface.

First off the M-1s are FABOULOUS. Period. This is one panel speaker that kicks ass dynamically with bass slamm like you read about. They don't need a sub. Nothing phases them. Peaks are scaled effortlessly and they don't just stop on a dime but can hit light speed before reaching the dimes edge. Larry's done a great job of setting them up too.

Front end was the latest Meitner DSD transport and DAC, followed by his two box tubed pre (forgot the name)all plugged into a PS Audio P300.

First listening thru the Parasound JC-1 all of the above characteristics were quite apparent. These are exceptional amps. The overall tonal balance, however, seemed a bit lean and forward to me with a slight nasal quality on certain material. I suspect there is a mild peak in the 1 Khz region. The soundstage was spectacular! A biiiiig panel that can image precisely. Wow!

Next we took my S250 Sig, plugged it into a PS Audio Ultimate Outlet which was them plugged into the P300. We used the single ended inputs with the Reference Line DSL cabling and Bybee filters that I brought with me. As the S250 had been sitting idle for about 4 hours and has a SERIOUS power supply (dual mono in fact with dual transformers)the in rush of power, promptly shut down the P300 which was already pushing 120 watts into the front end. After repowering everything back up there were no further power up problems as the S250s caps were now fully charged. At idle it drew only 20 watts.

The differences were immediately apparent and, to my ears and sonic priorities, better. Larry was a bit lukewarm at first as the amp needed some time to warm up sounding a bit constipated and dark until about 1/2 hours into the session. More serious was the fact that we just could not get the gain we needed to match our previous listening levels. The S250 has about 3-4 db less gain than the JC-1 and the single ended output of the pre drops the gain a further 6 db (we were using the pre's balanced output with the JC-1). So we had to listen thru the volume difference. What we did agree on was that everything was exceptionally CLEAN,open and detailed. That darkness was really the background blackness brought on by that cleanliness. Not so careful listening showed that there was actually more treble information but greater "liquidity". Though the volume was considerably lower, I though the overall presentation was less forward. Soundstaging was at first cramped but as the S250 warmed up it became huge, transparent and very well focused. A very musically involving presentation. However, we just could not really crank it so we tried the balanced inputs with his cables. Yup, much greater volume level but as this guy can deliver current, we shut down the P300 after only about another 3 db of volume. Rats! During that time however, it was pretty obvious to me that the balance inputs and their silver wiring needed breaking in with things sounding a bit thin and flat..but still pretty good.

To get around the input power limitations we then plugged the S250 into the conditioner that power the JC-1s (still using the balanced inputs). This is where things got interesting as yeah, there was more volume capability, but to my ears things took a good couple of steps backwards. Again, thinner and flatter. Then we tried plugging the Ultimate outlet into the chain. Wow! At first we thought things were darker again but not so, just cleaner. These things work for these type of amps and should be considered mandatory!!! I had noticed this effect before and much more dramatically with the Tact amps but was very pleasantly surprised to hear how much it did for the S250.

However, this does cloud a direct comparison of the S250 to the JC-1. As a system, I found the S250 (thru the well broken in single ended inputs), Ultimate Outlet, P300 combo superior to the JC-1. In fact, I think I preferred the S250 thru the balanced inputs and Ultimate outlet to the JC-1. Unfortunately, we did not have time to try the Ultimate outlet on the JC-1 or thru their never used, single ended inputs. My conclusion is that they will probably sound very similar to each other on an absolute basis. However the S250 Sig IS a whole lot cheaper and can, for an equivalent system price point, be taken up to a level that's noticeably superior to the JC-1 (IMHO) thru the use of an Ultimate outlet and Power Plant style device.

As this posting has gotten rather long winded, the bottom line is that the S250 Sig and the Soundlab M-1 are a great combination.

I'll save the long winded discourse concerning the Tact amp comparison for another posting but only say now that Larry like it and yes, they too can drive the big SLs.

Jeff

Amandare:

Yep, and it'll get even better. Makes a very, very good amp into a great amp. Based upon my listening and the small price difference between the standard and Signature, I bet the the Sig will WAY out-sell the standard so I've been encouraging Henry to skinny down his product line to just two models, the mono and stereo Sigs, and offer upgrades to the existing fleet of standard units.

I still think a really interesting comparison would be between a pair of stereo sigs passively bi-amping and a set of sig mono blocks. The price points are the same.

I just got thru with another set of comparisons of the H2O S250 Sigs and my Tact 2150s. The sigs were, of course, run from the analog outputs of the TCS MK II while the Tact amps were fed from digital outputs. Both were plugged into their own PS audio Ultimate outlets which were then plugged into a single PS Audio P600 regenerator.

First up were the Tact amps. They were very smooth but after a while I felt something was missing...a bit of low level information as well a bit of drive. The sound was pretty and involving but a bit on the, well, boring side. I kept wanting the music to pick up the pace. It took me about a week to get past the pretty sound and start carping along those lines. The S250 Sigs were sitting idle.

Then I switched over to the S250s. Well the difference was immediate and obvious even without warm up. My right foot started tapping immediately. The sound was pretty as well but very, very open. And the bass, wow, the bass was like you read about, very tight, focused but well integrated with the music, providing a rather thrilling underpinning to everything.

This was a surprise as before when I sent my standard S250s back to Henry for updating I slightly preferred the Tact's using the exact same setup. Now the table were turned quite noticeably.

This tells me a couple of things. First, the DACs in the TCS are quite good and second, the Signature upgrade has turned a really good amp into a great amp.

I've not given up on the Tact amps yet as I've been feeding their digital inputs with a cheap set of Radio Shack digital interconnects because they were the only ones with the right length to reach the amps. I really need to try something a little bit more uptown. Also, several people have suggested that I do the upsampling just after the transport, then feed the TCS with that, and finally, put a Monarchy jitter reducer just before the input of each amp. Great! Just what I want, more boxes and wires. But I'm going to give it a try.

Jeff

Actually, I do get a bit of compression using the P600 after a certain volume level is reached. But then I don't listen real loud and my room has concrete walls, floor and ceiling so it's very "efficient". However, the P600 does indeed clean things up a lot and so do the ultimate outlets. When I get the scratch up, I'll start trolling for another P600 to dedicate to the amps.

Jeff

I leave my Tacts and H2O's on all the time. However, this time last year a lightning strike did take out the midrange and tweeter ribbons of my Apogee Divas with a colossal POW. This was prior to me using the Ultimate outlets or P600. The amps were connected directly to the ribbons with no intervening passive x-over components. The H2O's can and will source a butt load of current.

I will soon get the power supply upgrade for the TCS. It's from the same guy that sold me the amps.

I did another round of listening with both OEM's amps (3 Tact and H2O Sigs, tri-amping my Apogee Studio Grands) using various power conditioning configurations. The results were similar to what I got before, that being the Tact 2150 is MUCH more sensitive to power conditioning and cords than the H2O. Plugged straight into the wall I much preferred the H2O, but like I said before, I really need to try a quality digital interconnect to be fair and any recommendations for a 2.5 to 3.0 M interconnect that's reasonable in price would be appreciated. Surprisingly the best bang for the buck by far were the high current Ultimate Outlets. They gave me basically the same improvement as going into the P600 for the H2O (which was a "moderate" improvement) and no or very little further improvement was had when that combination was plugged into the P600. So the H2O's are no longer plugged into the P600,which means I can play load as hell now....if I want to.

I had basically the same experience with plugging the Tact amps into the Ultimate outlets except the improvement was considerable, taking the amp from unacceptable to excellent. There was further improvement by plugging them into the P600 as long as the volume levels were moderate. The overall improvement was rather dramatic.

However, for each comparison the basic differences between each amp remained: While they were tonal clones of each other, the main differences were in openness,boogie and bass control with the H2O S250 Sig coming out on top. However, I DO need to feed the Tact amps a more uptown digital signal and their x-over functions are to die for if you're into bi & triamping like me.

his has been a significant finding for me as I originally prefered the Tact amps overall to the standard S250 when being fed power by the Ultimate Outlet P600 combination. If you have a standard S250, I really, really suggest you get it upgraded to the Signature configuration. This is just a flat out great amp.

Jeff