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Lemme tell you a story....

A few weeks ago a buddy brought over a Trends TA 10.1 amp and his ADS 710/2 monitors. This combo with my TVC was the best sound i've heard (until very recently with the Hawthorne SI's) in my L/R...images were everywhere & quite deep and REAL. That tiny amp is SO quiet its eeerie. Anyways, the set-up was odd. We were using the volume knob of the Trends as the volume control with the TVC volume up 100%...so in reality the TVC was like a buffer. Source>TVC>Trends>speakers. Cool thing was we could use 4 difft sources with the Trends amp.

With the TVC's volume at 70% and the Trends at 20% the sound sorta sucked, just not that much fun. With the TVC up 100%, the Trends didn't go up more than 30% of volume and played REALLY LOUD but under control and sweet & oh so smooth. Somehow this combo played much louder, and seemingly more efficient, with the TVC inserted. WIth just the trends running the show the volume at 70%-80% still wasn't that great.

The only reason i mention this is there's some sort of synergy between those 2. I e-mailed Nick Chua, the TVC designer, about it and he said it probably was something between the TVC and the T-amps...and that this couldn't be replicated with other integrateds. part of my e-mail to him was asking him to make me an integrated tube amp.

I use my TVC with a Belles 150A HotRod and also a Muse Model 100. The Muse works best with the TVC in terms of gain & Impedence matching and all that. the Belles seems a bit lighter in the power department with the TVC, but its also less powerful than the Muse.
I think 30db of gain is a good thing to have in an amp to mate with a TVC, but the output impedence of the source + the input impedence of the amp is critical in terms of matching/synergy.

I have heard one system where the TVC stunk worse than Donkey balls, but it was a custom made matched Wright Sound system. Matching tube monoblocks, tube preamp and funky tube phono preamp. Removing the tube pre & inserting the TVC was a bad experience...total loss of all the magic. However, i think this is an islated case. If you have $25K worth of matched gear, don't get a $400 TVC!

For many folks though, the TVC has been a real revelation. It beats the snot out of the older Belles GR8 resistor based passive pre I had before the TVC.



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  • Lemme tell you a story.... - mattcecil1@yahoo.com 07:39:41 04/17/07 (0)


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