jmaldonado

Responses from jmaldonado

Can tube amps give true high end bass?
Ulf, there's no way a tube amp will produce better bass than a solid-state amp. It's just the laws of physics. Specially, not a 40 Watt tube amp! What you are probably describing as "better bass" has to do with the coloration and second harmonic d... 
Has anybody had experience with the Orions?
Tim, thanks for the review. I have two questions:1) Are you able to detect by ear any of the 2 (or 3) crossover regions? How well blended are they?2) Is the crossover adjustable?Regards, 
Has anybody had experience with the Orions?
I have always tought that dipole speakers have an inherent advantage against conventional designs whose main priority is the supression of back radiation and box resonances "ad extreme". Mr. Linkwitz has observed that a good dipole, under the righ... 
Has anybody had experience with the Orions?
Carlos, thank you so much for the offer. I might take it... ;). The Gradients are also very interesting with their bass radiation configurability and their coincident tweeters. And they only require a single amplifier. You must be very happy with ... 
What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage?
Cartridges work the same way. It may not have been the intention of a cartridge manufacturer to make a balanced source out of it, but that is in fact how they behave since neither side of the cartridge is 'grounded', i.e. tied to its metal body. I... 
Has anybody had experience with the Orions?
Thank you all for your interesting answers.Regalma1, I hope somebody has them here in Mexico as well. I'll look into the forum.Gregm, you're right. Live music was an overstatement, but being close to the source is my cup of tea. This implies neutr... 
MM to MC back to MM
Eldartford: I see. This appears to be a good way to switch the gain between MC and MM. However, the amount of gain change seems extreme IMHO.Audiofeil: Thx for the info.Regards, 
MM to MC back to MM
Eldartford, how do you know this? Do you have the schematic or something?Regards, 
MM to MC back to MM
A direct comparison between MM and MC is difficult, because in common practice phono preamps have an extra pre-preamplifier stage or a step-up transformer to satisfy the extra gain required by MC cartridges. This introduces a sufficient loss of tr... 
Help needed recording vinyl to computer
It definitely seems to be a DC offset problem, with the left channel having a positive offset, and the right channel a negative one. This DC offset is being generated by your phono stage. The first thing you should do is reset the zoom level in Au... 
Musicality vs Transparency & Detail
In my view, there's no such thing as "extreme detail retrieval". There is just the detail that every recording contains, and from that point you can only go down. The idea probably comes from the particular habit of some components to slightly emp... 
Has anyone upgraded their preamp with V-caps?
Currently, we use V-Caps in the phono stage of our preamp. Capacitors are still indispensable for the RIAA decoding process, so we make sure that high quality parts execute this delicate task. We have found that the Teflon V-Caps are one of the be... 
tubes and analog
Raul is as honest as a person can get. This doesn't necessarily mean that he always speaks using rosy words. He just described what he saw from his own perspective, as we have witnessed blown tubes in the middle of a presentation more than once. A... 
tubes and analog
Guys, no single device, either thermoionic or semiconductive deserves the honor of two persons confronting each other because of it. Trust me on this.Well, at least not until diamond transistors are invented... ;) 
How do tube Watts compare to SS Watts?
Watts are watts. Tubes sound better than SS when they clip and its more subtractive. SS just sounds crappy when they clip.Some manufacturers of solid-state amps have taken this into account. Levinson amps, for example, have a built-in smoothing ci...