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atmasphere

Responses from atmasphere

Silky and soft highs: product of coloration?
Hi Dave, it was this comment:Violins are "not" hard for an amplifier to reproduce...it doesn't take a mega priced amp....even an Onkyo can do it, and with out the unintended artifacts of shrillness.that I was commenting on. IMO Onkyos and similar ... 
TVC preamps: good or bad?
TVCs can be considerably more neutral than many active line stages. But not **all** line stages! A lot depends on how careful the design of the TVC actually is. The issues of TVCs are: bandwidth, hysteresis loss (introducing a loss of low level de... 
Silky and soft highs: product of coloration?
Dgarretson, for the most part I agree with Dave although I do not agree that an Onkyo is in the same league with anything we are talking about here. But I do not think that cost has much to do with how well an amp can reproduce things properly. Pr... 
Silky and soft highs: product of coloration?
The ability of a system to reproduce the scrape of multiple bows on strings is something that is not in the purview of an amplifier that always sounds 'silky'. Such an amplifier is glossing over detail. 
Can an amp overdamp a speaker?
Hi Dave, the distortion I'm talking about is the kind that you get without the amplifier clipping, but from what you are describing I can't help but wonder if the lower-powered amps you were auditioning were simply being driven too hard.Once you g... 
Can an amp overdamp a speaker?
Dave, its likely something else, in this case power and distortion. Audiophiles like to think that 'damping factor' is what they are hearing when the bass is better, and a lack of 'damping' when the bass is muddy. What is really happening is that ... 
grado hum
Most tone arms with a single-ended output will also have a ground wire for the tone arm ground. In the case of a high output cartridge like the Grado, sometimes the cartridge can pick up hum from the motor if the motor is not also grounded to the ... 
Tube vs Tran
Plus not all tube amps have output transformers :) 
Sound Anchor Component Stand
We've used one for years. One of the nice things about the Sound Anchor is it can be custom built. In our case, it was custom built to accommodate our preamp and turntable, each of which has its own anti-vibration platform.The stand sits on a set ... 
grado hum
We had a Rega with a Grado that hummed; I found that neither the platter bearing nor the motor was grounded! Adding a wire was all that was needed- presto! no hum. The wire tied the ground of the motor to the platter bearing and the tone arm ground. 
Experts: Why is preamp important?
Tomcy6, for termination of a balanced line 600 ohms is the standard. By preamp standards, this is a very low impedance and many preamps can't drive that without a loss of bass, loss of signal level or both. Even though the termination is often not... 
Speaker Effeciency and Bass Production
Cyclonicman, there are OTLs that can make 500 watts, FWIW. 
Tube vs Tran
Dave, I respectfully disagree. The idea of damping factor is mostly mythology. If you hear a differece between an amp with a 'damping factor' of 1000 and one with 50, its likely due to other things than 'damping factor'. More likely the difference... 
Experts: Why is preamp important?
Pinkus, in fact our preamps are designed to support the balanced line standard- in effect dramatically reducing the effect of the interconnect cable to the point that it is no longer important. This is not to say that you can't hear differences, b... 
Experts: Why is preamp important?
Don_s, If a preamp has a low output impedance, many of the differences you are accustomed to hearing in interconnect cables go away.In fact the balanced line system used for decades in the recording studio and broadcast was conceived to eliminate ...