lynn_olson
Responses from lynn_olson
| 300b lovers Well, enough of the rant on DACs. Addressing the question in the post by lewinskyh01, what does a really good tube linestage bring to the table if the DAC can directly drive the power amps? A sense of ease, dynamic impact, and sometimes more vivi... | |
| 300b lovers Hi, Lewinskih01! You bring up two different approaches to system building. One is taking full advantage of modern multichannel DAC chips (8-channel is a common default size) and letting DSP do the heavy lifting. Taking it a bit further, tuning ea... | |
| 300b lovers IT coupling dates back to the 1920’s Atwater Kent and radios of that vintage. Like field coil loudspeakers, it is the oldest form of coupling of all. But transformers have always been labor-intensive and expensive (going right to the beginning of ... | |
| 300b lovers Once you hear the difference an IT makes, you realize: "Aha! So that’s what RC coupling sounds like!" And then you start hearing that coloration everywhere in mainstream audio equipment, and can never forget what it sounds like. This is an experi... | |
| 300b lovers Since I’m on a roll (and thankfully nearly out of the woods on Covid), let’s talk about PP coloration. It exists, it is real, and if you spend time with top-quality (not junk) SET amps, the absence of that coloration is wonderful and refreshing. C... | |
| 300b lovers Matt Kamna, the designer of the Whammerdyne, is an old Tektronix guy I’ve known since the late Eighties. We were at the second meeting of the Oregon Triode Society, and were both so impressed by what we heard at the meeting we set aside a project ... | |
| 300b lovers I’ve been a little quiet since I got whacked by Covid on my return to Colorado. Got an intense sore throat on Tuesday, tested positive on Wednesday, and started Paxlovid that afternoon. Doing better today ... actually, mostly better, and my mind i... | |
| 300b lovers I wish I had heard the Dutch & Dutch 8C’s. The exact opposite approach of our room, but 100% valid: internally tri-amped with DSP for the side-firing drivers to create a near-perfect cardioid radiation pattern. Digital-in is limited to 48/24 P... | |
| 300b lovers The Raven is particularly well-suited to driving transistor amps because: 1) The transformers prohibit the transmission of DC pulses to RCA and XLR outputs, under all conditions, including total failure. 2) Unlike solid-state preamps, there are ... | |
| 300b lovers Coming back to Earth, I heard the Purifi Class D amplifier at the show. Quite good, and free of the usual transistor Class AB metallic coloration. The Raven preamp would make an excellent match for the Purify, since it is very transparent, has ple... | |
| 300b lovers Don’t get me started on the differences between Mahayana Buddhism and Vedanta Hinduism, and subtle (but fairly obvious) Buddhist influences in the Sermon on the Mount. Here’s one for you: when I was a little tyke in Japan, no more than ten years ... | |
| 300b lovers I’ll third Don Sach’s opinion. I’ll go further and say the Songer speakers are the best full-range drivers I have ever heard, better than the Feastrex (which I have heard), and remarkably, free of the upper-mid roughness that usually plagues drive... | |
| 300b lovers The day before, Don told me about Whitestix, his oldest customer, and said he was trained as an economist. (!) So as we sat down to a delicious dinner at the Thai restaurant across the street, I was curious and couldn’t help asking: "Chicago Schoo... | |
| 300b lovers I’m truly sorry you had that experience. The staff in the (fairly small) room rotated between Don, myself, and the four younger people at Spatial. (Don and I were the obvious old farts.) The Spatial people were manning the room (with a nonstop 4-h... | |
| 300b lovers What. A. Show! Just got home ten minutes ago from Seattle. The most intense thing I've done since I went to the European Triode Festival in 2004. At least I didn't have to fly to Zurich this time ... only a 2.5 hour flight to SeaTac, and quick tr... |