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Re: I can do that...

Posted by Paul Folbrecht (A) on December 27, 2006 at 12:11:23

In Reply to: Re: I can do that... posted by Ralph on December 27, 2006 at 11:51:43:

I am going to post my thoughts here. I am listening to a pair of A-S OTLs right now, on loan from local dealer.

These are the things that occurred to me within the first few moments (I now have 4 hours listening):

1) They sound a bit 'thin' (compared to what I am used to), yet still VERY 'pure'.

2) The bass is astonishing. These are MA-1s run with 4 sets of tubes to simulate 60W M60s. It is far tighter and punchier than my 845 monoblocks.

3) Vocals, for whatever reason, are just not giving me the same tingles of realism.

I have never bought the "yummy 2nd-order harmonics" argument as explaining SETs' realism before because blind listening tests have shown up to 3% 2nd order HD to be inaudible, and no SET is producing that much when mated intelligently to speakers, except on transients. You may be right on the money about the distortion adding to the dynamic effect, but most vocal-only passages are drawing no more than a few watts in typical listening.

I am undoubtedly very conditioned to SET sound at this point. I'm quite open to the possibility that this OTL sound is, in fact, more correct, but I'll be darned if I know how to determine that.

One inescapable conclusion I can offer at this point is that these are fabulous amps. It is truly a unique sound, not like solid-state, or chip-amps, or transformed push-pull tube amps, or SETs. It's another category, and certainly does some things better than all of those.

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