Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

Thanks for the kind words!   Working with Lynn has been a pleasure and I have increased my knowledge of tube circuits considerably since I met him..   He got me to consider "going outside the box".  The Raven and Blackbirds are about leaving the box.   Paradigm shifts are always healthy, or at least the consideration of them.  I have built or restored a LOT of tube circuits over the years and nothing I have ever heard or built or restored can touch the Raven and Blackbird sonically.  I think a lot of that is due to what Lynn discussed above about all the very subtle spatial cues that can be lost with lesser electronics and speakers.  I hear things with the Raven and Blackbirds that I have never heard in any stereo before.  Those who have heard them agree.  They don't sound like what you are used to hearing.  They push through boundaries.

As for reviews... we are working on it.  The final production versions of the preamp and amps are just finishing.  These include new cases from a different woodworker.  We didn't want to send out review units that did not look exactly like the final product.  Sonically the gear has been stable for a while, but the final cases had to be sorted out from a reliable supplier who could meet our demand.  That has happened and a set for review will be finished in the next month or so.  We have made arrangements with Positive Feedback to send them a set in the fall, and expect a review by the end of the year.  Of course we hope that owners will chime in as on this thread.   

Lastly, I don't know what shows we may attend, but I am pretty sure there will be a special demo in Portland for the Oregon Triode Society.  Maybe in August or more likely in October.  We will have a large room for two full days with the Raven and Blackbirds, and of course Spatial Audio Lab speakers.   I will be there along with the Spatial team.  So if you are in the Portland area, or perhaps want to make the trek from Seattle, you can hear the preamp and amps paired with top end gear in a good room without all the buzz of an audio show.  When we have a schedule we will let everyone know and hope to see some of you in a relaxed setting where we can all hang out and listen to music!

I expect to be there for the Oregon Triode Society demo as well. Maybe I’ll meet some old friends ... I joined the OTS way back in 1990 or so, at the second meeting.

Way too far to drive all the way from the Denver metro area, so I’ll fly again, but take Business Class this time. My days of flying in Cattle Class are over, can’t handle the crowds or the itsy-bitsy seats the airlines use now. I do miss the Amtrack sleeper service from Denver to Portland ... that was a very nice train ride.

Looking back, I look at the incredible complexity of that Shadow Vector patent (which I invented solo, unlike the three-person CBS team) and how I really jumped in at the deep end of the pool when I joined the hifi biz professionally. Working as a commissioned salesman was such a horrific experience I was strongly motivated to get out of Los Angeles and move to Audionics in Portland, Oregon.

Although I had my differences with Audionics, they did believe in me enough to hire me to build the prototype, which took two years of hard work. That stretch was one of the biggest pushes I’ve done, along with finally completing my Psychology degree a few years later. Speaker design was considerably easier.

Shadow Vector Patent

I have Don's 300b Shoebox Mono's and preproduction Raven and the combination is stellar. The music is authentic and rich and musical with the ability to listen to hours and hours without feeling tired or fatigued. It has everything I've always wanted in my system without overreaching. It has all the detail you could ask for without being analytical, clean but not to the point of being sterile, full without heaviness. I'm so happy with the sound that most if not all other systems I listen to anymore just don't do it for me even many multi 6 figure systems one of them being a $600,000 system.

@sjsfiveo Yes, price has very little relationship to sound quality beyond a certain point.  One walk through an audio show will make that abundantly clear.  The Revelation series project was about designing the best sounding preamp and amps that we could using ideas that Lynn has been working on for decades, that have their basis in wonderful circuits and approaches developed a LONG time ago.  We implemented those ideas with modern power supply, filament supply, transformer, and attenuator technology that I had been using for a number of years prior to that.  The idea was to build the best sounding preamp and amps we could and then price them based on the build cost and required profit margin for the manufacturer to stay in business, while paying real technicians in Utah, real living wages.  You really cannot build gear of this quality on a shoe string budget.  That said, the gear does not cost six figures, nor does it have to!   

I want to revisit what Lynn said about subtle content that is present in two channel recordings.  The content that gives the ethereal sense of space, and the very subtle reverb that is present from recording techniques or actually added by the producer.  I have owned really good stereos for years, both rebuilt vintage-based, and my own creations.   What the Raven (Revelation) preamp and the matching Blackbird amps do is to present this information.  It is not masked as in most systems, including some very good ones I have owned, and some very expensive ones I have heard at audio shows.  I am listening to the final versions of the Raven and Blackbird amps, and I hear these things that I have never heard before in recordings I am very familiar with.  It adds a whole new level of enjoyment and has been discussed, you can hear the intent of the musicians and the producer or recording engineer, and the room if the recording is from a live performance.   

The shoebox mono prototype amps mentioned by @sjsfiveo ​​​and ​@whitestix will give a portion of this effect and are very good.  The final version of the amps have it in spades.  We have improved both the preamp and amps just a wee bit since the Dallas show and I am looking forward to the next demo of the Revelation series so that others can hear what I get to enjoy in my living room daily.   I completely understand that a $19,995 pair of amps is outside the budget of many folks, but I do thoroughly enjoy playing them for people so that they can hear what is possible and what we have been up to.   Most people (myself included up to two years ago) have never heard this sort of presentation.  From a design standpoint, I understand exactly why all of our choices work well with this circuit idea, and why the system sounds as it does.  But hearing it is quite astounding to me.  It just vanishes and leaves the music hanging space for you to enjoy.