Home SET Asylum

Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream.

The whole M2.2 design is unlike most SET amps.

Sorry, ML2.2.

i) Truly serious gapped OPT,

ii) huge regulated PSU including a big power transformer.

iii) 12-14dbw of power into the right load,

iv) grunty overbuilt gain/driver stages

v) IIRC it also allows a little NFB, or has that gone from the M2.x series?

vi) large heavy, and expensive* and HE-ish (>93db/w) speakers needed for FR stereo sound to maximise the ROI.

vii) so expensive* to use twice over, but justifiable in my view, though never affordable by me, even IF I won a lottery I'd do something else.

Expensive high end stuff? I don't hate this sector - lucky bastards ! - but I use DIY rebuild/rethinks on PP classics instead, to get close and for far, far less money.

The $$$$$$$ prices are 'fair' because they don't make a lot of items, and the components used to build them, even when bought in 100s or even thousands, still have to be paid for while in inventory before mfr, and many are rejected, and then there's the inventory cost until the completed pieces are sold. I should think their enterprise risk is also quite high.

Lastly, I don't think SE amplification is a sine qua non for excellence. Indeed low power DHT SETs seem to me to be a good example of an 'interesting rat-hole' to go down, design wise for hi-fi. Because deep bass and mid-bass control become really DIFFICULT.

IME carefully managed PP/differential circuits can do the magic too, for less. But this does require the use of regulated/big PSU's, SS constant current sources for splitter/drivers and perhaps power valves, and probably DC and AC balance controls on the driver and output stages, .... if even they are to be accessible / affordable AND still do the magic.

DIY is the budget path here. Including my version, find a good tech to work with on 'rethinking' used classics.

I also feel that multi-amping has real benefits so long as the 'amplification whole' has matching rise and decay times, and the speakers are at least capable of doing real 3D on real-stereo recordings. This includes revealing the recording's overall polarity.

Skimming the reviews of the whole ML2.x series so far, and of the Canadian behemoth speakers used with the ML2.2, I was quite struck by that mob's top two or three speakers clearly differentiating and revealing: the playing/singing, the live acoustic, and engineering/miking of each recording, when the Wilson MAXX's tend to homogenise a bit on the last two. The reviewer in question preferred the Wilsons as well.

Now, one of the several things I agree with Peter Quortrop of Audio Note about is a deeply wise point he made in his marketing a long while ago. It is that the only really valid test of whether you have improved your home audio system is whether the change has increased the differences between every recording you have in those areas mentioned, including improving the music made on all of them as well, despite the engineering or acoustic. So, I think I'd have preferred the Canadian company's speakers, and I think he was STILL a bit too close ;-)!

More agrees with PQ!? Valve circuits just do get some things right, and that very few SS circuits approached them until quite recently.

A good system just should tell you that stuff and make music, they are not incompatible. Mine has since 1981 at least, and on a budget cf most here, I might add.

I disagree with Peter on; that SE is THE path as I've laid out above, about 'noisy' / 'tuned' speaker enclosures, and about in-corner mounting of any but Constant-Directivity CD speakers and I'm not too keen on that.

On the speaker front I still feel that a WR driver band-pass filtered, with a ribbon tweeter, and a bass array from ~ 200 hz down to 25 or lower, and tri-amped, is a more valid path.

IMO this requires >/= to 91db/w midband sensitivity and an easy 8 or 16 ohm load for each amp. Do avoid the floor reflection dip as well.

This path does allow the use of SE amps for mids / treble.

The best deep bass I've ever heard from a home system? A toss-up between a house-extension sub-horn here in Canberra yrs ago which was scary, a wall of my favourite short throw Foster 8"s in IB, and some dipole bass units firing across not into corners and aligned with a pr of QUADs. Real cathedral organ is my memory test here.



Warmest

Tim Bailey

Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger



Edits: 04/28/12 04/28/12 04/28/12

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