technomagus
Responses from technomagus
| Does the Mark Levinson 331 suck? I had a 331 until a couple of years ago. Other than being a pain to move around, it was an excellent amp (fully serviced and recapped). Effortlessly powerful, neutral, analytical and drove my Martin Logans or Spendors very well indeed. So why did ... | |
| ???What's The LEAST Expensive "End Game"Amplifier You've Ever Heard??? This may not be my actual end game amp, but I certainly wouldn’t be disappointed if it were: Octave v110SE with KT150s and the Super Black Box cap bank. About £11k in the UK and it comprehensively saw off my Mark Levinsons. | |
| PSVane KT150 No problem - I’ll probably try the replacements when they arrive - I need a backup set of valves, would rather not buy Russian, and I’m currently out of pocket on customs fees and VAT! | |
| PSVane KT150 I bought a matched quartet recently for my v110SE. They did indeed try to fry my amp :( fortunately, Octave’s protection circuits are very good indeed. Returned to dealer, tested and found to be faulty. Obviously that put me off PSvane rather thor... | |
| Best DAC’S $5k to $15k My final shortlist last year included the Dave, the Bartok and the Tambaqui. All are great DACS and, frankly, the decision comes down to your system and environment, your musical tastes and the state of your ears! (as for any of us). For my tast... | |
| Martin Logan vs. Everything Ignore them. There are many good speakers around, and - in my extensive experience - Martin Logan's are right up there with the very best. They aren't cheap, but they aren't hand-crafted from unobtainium by vestal virgins, which seems to be the en... | |
| Can a tube amp be damaged by a speaker switch? Depends on the amp: anything made by Octave for instance wouldn’t matter at all. Others I know to be less robust | |
| Have you found your "End-Game" speakers yet? I have. And it feels so good!!! Depends on whether you’re talking about components/systems that you don’t feel the need to ever change, regardless of inclination/budget or those to which you have such an attachment that they’re going nowhere, ever. In the first category are my M... | |
| Why is solid state more popular when tubes are better? This is very much a 'first world problems' discussion, but my pennyworth is from the perspective of someone who owns both S/S and - very recently - a valve amplifier. I've always had S/S, from original Quad 303 through (currently) Mark Levinson 33... | |
| Audio Research in Receivership. Re the point about asymmetry in market presence between European & US brands: I live in Scotland and spent the last several months trying to audition (and hopefully buy) an ARC amplifier. I approached all the listed dealers within several hour... | |
| Inexpensive Good Vintage Turntables? if you want a fantastic sounding engineering work of art, how about a Transcriptors/Michell Hydraulic Reference? either with the Transcriptors Unipivot, an SME 3009 or a Grace/Hadcock? | |
| In-wall ethernet cable for streamer Much depends on how much RF noise there is in your local environment and adjacent power cables. If that’s not too bad, then your 5e will be fine, otherwise I’d recommend any decent shielded copper Cat6/7. The key with STP is getting the terminatio... | |
| What are you using as a streamer? Constructive feedback please. Arcam AVR20 (Roon/MQA) for main system, pi4/Roonbridge/ifi linear power supply/meridian Explorer2 for music room and various other Pi+HifiBerry combos for other rooms. All fed from M1 Mac Mini/Roon+Tidal over perfectly normal STP Cat6 and enterpri... |