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RE: Really?

Posted by mcbuddah (A) on July 5, 2015 at 16:33:04

In Reply to: RE: Really? posted by A.Wayne on July 5, 2015 at 14:50:47:

I bought a pair of Genesis 6.1 speakers from Audiogon for $4500 including delivery. The Snell B's I had before are still fantastic speakers, but the metal dome tweeters can't compete with the round ribbon tweeters on the 6.1s. The Snells 10" woofer and subwoof can play low in the 20s for bass but each Genesis has a pair of aluminum 12" servo-controlled woofers that can be as clean as your room lets you play.

The amps I have now are a pair of B-stock (show demo) D-Sonic 600w mono-blocks that double at 4 ohms. I didn't audition these - I bought them on a hunch that they could fill some pretty big footsteps left empty when my MA-1 100 w/channel OTLs went belly up. I just flat out did not have the money to get them repaired. The 1200 watt D-Sonics were highly praised in a 2012 6Moons review and I threw the dice and ordered a pair of their baby brothers for around $1800 shipped. They did not go effortlessly into my system, although they had some stellar qualities right out of the box. They were so close to sounding good enough that I became obsessed with getting the maximum performance out of them before giving up and reselling them. It seems that they were far more transparent than my aging OTLs had been late in their life, and they were showing me problems that had been masked. Determined to give them the best chance to show what they could do, I read everything I could find on-line about class D amps, including interviews with some of the all-star amp designers who were dabbling in them like Merril Audio, Jeff Rowland, Steve McCormack to see what the 6-figure amps have. In all cases the class D amps seem to respond more than other amp classes to audiophile fundamentals: Footers, platforms, EMI/RF abatement, power cords, cables supported off the floor, etc. The common denominator was that small-signal interference such as EMI and vibration-spawned noise was far more detrimental to Class D amps and must be prioritized before further component sound quality can truly show its full potential.

Since I have upgraded my system as redically as I have, it is unfair to attempt to describe the sound of the Atma-sphere amps. They never had the footers and maple platforms or all the brass or the clean power or the benefit of properly dressed cables; it's just not fair. I hope that I will have the money to bring them back to life someday, but the rest of the system has become even more transparent and it is telling me to upgrade my power conditioning. I am waiting for a new UberBuss that will cost me about a hundred dollars more than I paid for my first power conditioner - an original Tice Power Block that cost a grand.

The point I am trying to make is that the strategy of throwing more and more money at your system in an eternal cycle is not the only way to improve your sound. The improvements in material science, manufacturing and process improvements and a lot of creative designers plus a thriving on-line marketplace for used equipment make it possible to actually improve your system despite the reduced budget that retirement brings, and to bring hope to others who are dreading the day when their old gear needs replacement. The world has moved on and I'm glad it has.
Everything is going to the dogs

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