Sit back, boys and girls, and prepare for a rollicking tale of excitement, adventure, challenges, and rewards!
Given the choice, I think we would all choose perfection. When it comes to amplifiers (and music reproduction in general), there are many factors that contribute to that tantalizing goal:
- PRaT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing)
- Dynamics
- Presence / palpability
- Energized air
- Soundstage
- Pinpoint imaging
- Deep, controlled bass
- Natural highs (extended, but not shrill)
- Tonal richness and accuracy
- Enjoyable at all typical volumes (anything beyond 65 dB)
- Sense of Scale
- That Live! sound
- Lyricism and musicality
- Flow
- Emotion
- Etc.
This is a rather tall order, and we typically don’t get everything that we want, so we tend to prioritize. For example, dynamics and PRaT are prerequisites for me, but impressive tonality is a
“nice to have”.
Then there’s my good friend.
He wants it ALL ! His version of “good enough” is a very high bar indeed. Rather than enjoying all the stuff that’s amazing, he can’t help but fixate on any problems, referring to them as "splinters". Consequently, he’s been on a very long journey for audio satisfaction, suffering much of the way.
A Bit of History…
When my friend and I first started talking audio many years ago, he was running with an Oppo Blu-ray player, (IIRC) NAD pre and power separates, a Musical Fidelity X-10 V3 tube buffer with the external supply and umbilical (his first serious bit of “audiophile” kit), and the KEF LS50 (non-meta). He upgraded his preamp to an Emotiva, which he felt was a big jump forward.
He’s in the country, and his power quality is inconsistent, so he added a
PS Audio PerfectWave P5 to improve that.
He changed his speakers to the
Vandersteen 2ce Sig III, which did a much better job of energizing his room and doing “scale”, even though it didn’t image quite as well. (The KEF’s concentric driver does that exceedingly well.)
About 5 years ago, I started building
Avondale amps for him. First was the NCC200, then NCC220 Qudos, but it wasn’t until the NCC300 Octave monos that he felt it was nominally acceptable. Last year I surprised him with the SE200, which he felt was a welcome improvement.
He also heard the
Neurochrome Modulus-686 that I built, which we both felt was powerful and accurate, but not rhythmically engaging. (We both require that PRaT itch to be scratched.)
He still uses the Oppo for playing discs, and he added the
EverSolo DMP-A6 (with optional LPS) for streaming.
Over the past couple of years, we also went on a DAC quest that I’ve summarized here:
The End of My DAC Journey? He ended up with the
Ferrum Wandla, Hypsos and FPL.
Time for a New Speaker…
He was marginally happy with various aspects of his system, but he decided that he had outgrown his Vandersteen speakers. He auditioned a bunch of options in various stores, and he heard my
Klipsch Cornwall IV. He liked the Cornwall, but there were some things that he felt weren’t “good enough”, so it didn’t make the cut.
Eventually he happened upon the
PMC fact.8 signature, and he fell in love. It also worked well with the Avondale SE200, which we took along for the audition. However, it didn’t have enough bass extension and heft, and he felt it was silly for his fancy new speaker to immediately require a subwoofer. Consequently, he presumed that he would need at least its big brother, the
fact.12.
While watching for an opportunity to buy the fact.12, he found a good deal on a used
PMC MB2se, so he went on a 2500km road trip to fetch them. After getting the speakers home, he had to shorten the stands to match his ear height. All that effort, and happiness eluded him yet again. The SE200 wasn’t up to the task.
He was told he would need
at least 200WPC to drive them.
FWIW, the speaker’s efficiency is 90 dB/Wm, and I suppose they might make that much noise with 1W, but they sure wouldn't sound any good.
Finding a Suitable Amplifier…
The Avondale NCC300 is more powerful, so I thought perhaps I might send him his old amp back, to test if it managed things better. Perhaps he could drive the woofers with the NCC300, and the mids and tweeters with the SE200. He nixed that idea because he didn’t want a second power amp in the setup, and he preferred the more sophisticated personality of the SE200.
Then Les from Avondale reached out, and graciously offered for me to go ahead with an SE400 build. That has roughly twice the power of the SE200, so could potentially be a good match for his hungry speakers. In my testing, the SE400 was a big improvement over the SE200, sounding wonderfully lyrical and tonally rich, with a great sense of PRaT. Overall, it has a much more sophisticated and confident presentation. When I cracked it up, though, things started to get a bit jumbled.
Someone here on PFM knew that I had built the Neurochrome Modulus-686, and was aware of my feelings about its strengths and weaknesses. He suggested that the
Orchard Audio Starkrimson Ultra might tickle my fancy, so I decided to build that as well, using their SPMS modules and optional capacitor smoothing banks. The resulting amp was a power and control monster, just as good as the Neurochrome in that regard, but with much better rhythm. It wasn’t the best for tonality, but I noticed that if I put my tube preamp in front, then the combo bettered the SE400.
Finally, my friend was talking to his local retailer (
The Audio Room in Calgary). They arranged for him to audition the top-of-the-line
Hegel H600 integrated.
I also took along my Benchmark HPA4 preamp, which I felt would better his Emotiva. And he had his dust-collecting Musical Fidelity X-10 V3 tube buffer on hand.
The Shootout…
Before we could get started, I had to tighten the binding posts on his speakers, which involved removing the mounting plate with the crossover. The crossover included many Solen capacitors and air core inductors, but curiously all resistors were of the inexpensive sandcast variety. Given the value of the speaker, I was surprised at that. As we were doing that, we noticed that the banana plugs on his link wires weren’t very tight, so we re-terminated all of those.
Our primary test tracks were:
- Pat Metheny “The Heat of the Day” – You get lots of deep busy bass, buffeted by many other elements across the frequency spectrum. Getting everything to sound simultaneously clear, controlled and musical is a real challenge. I’ve observed many systems utterly fail with this piece.
- Dr. Lonnie Smith “Paper Tiger” – This has loads of bass from the organ pedals, many extreme percussive elements, and the Hammond needs to have an intense tonal complexity when the Leslie starts to spin. Rhythmically it has the primary elements, plus a long loping gate that often doesn’t come through in lesser systems. If it sounds sleepy, then its a fail.
- Diana Krall “All or Nothing at All” – Christian McBride’s opening bass work has lots of “wood” in the sound, and his staccato notes require much finesse for the system to get right. Krall’s voice is lustrous and nuanced, with many well-placed slides that need to make sense with her band’s interplay.
- Four Play (debut album) – This isn’t my friend’s favorite music, so he doesn’t mind wearing it out as a test suite. He knows exactly how he expects it to sound, and it stresses many elements. As he puts it, “If the system isn’t good, then it will sound like milk toast. But if it feels really funky and musical, then the system is doing things right.
There were others, including rock, jazz, classical, and folk (Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, Mozart, Miles Davis, Joe Jackson, Jon Hassel, Andy Creeggan, Ahmad Jamal, etc.). We tended to listen to those only occasionally to validate our perceptions.
We started out with the SE200 (my first time hearing it on these speakers). It sounded very unengaging and “over there”. Virtually no soundstage. Flat and dull! Totally unsatisfying, so I understood my friend’s consternation. These speakers were clearly very demanding, as the fact.8 sounded great with this same amp.
Next up was the SE400, which was a big improvement. Much more natural and fulsome, with a wonderful sense of musicality. However, it was still soft around the edges (especially the bass, which is said to require LOTS of power and control for this speaker). Just as I noticed at my place, when we turned it up, it sounded a bit disorganized. There also wasn’t much of a soundstage.
(More on that later.)
Next was the Orchard. Control was much better. Notes were very START-STOP. Rhythmically exciting and dynamic! As I noticed at my house, though, it was missing the tonality that we had with the SE400. Overall, though, it was clearly the best at driving these speakers. We decided to leave the Orchard in place, then start tweaking upstream elements.
I’ve always teased my friend about his Emotiva preamp. That started back when I was running my Benchmark DAC2 straight into my power amps (because I had discovered it sounded better than through my Naim NAC52/Super). Since then. I've learned that sometimes a preamp really does help. We replaced his Emotiva with my Benchmark HPA4, and we were shocked at the improvement. Much more brilliance, clarity, and shimmer; more weight and palpability; and suddenly we had a significant soundstage! At the time we didn’t know whether the Emotiva had been choking that out, or if the Benchmark was adding it.
(Even more on that later.)
At this point, my friend was becoming hopeful, but he pointed out that the Hammond didn’t sound edgy enough--it needed more tonal complexity. That’s when we inserted the Musical Fidelity X-10 V3 tube buffer between the Benchmark and the Orchard. Those second-order harmonics added what he wanted to the Hammond, but it notably softened the edges of many things (especially bass). I thought perhaps it wasn’t getting enough signal from the Benchmark to make the tubes “sing”, so we moved it to between the Wandla and the Benchmark. That was the ticket! Suddenly everything snapped back into place, with the desired tonal intensity that my friend demanded.
So, this was the best by far, and I felt it should be sufficient to meet my friend’s expectations.
There was still one more component to test. We hooked the Wandla directly to the Hegel H600, then from it to the speakers. This is a very expensive unit, so there was the possibility that it would completely trounce the cheaper combo.
The differences were interesting. First, the soundstage shrank, which suggests that the Benchmark was adding the effect somehow. (I doubt that the expensive Hegel was choking it.)
It also lost much of the bass weight. Perhaps it was because of the things that were gone, but it sounded more nimble with busy rhythmic sections, but overall it was definitely a step back.
Then we realized that we could use its pre-amp section alone. We hooked that into the Orchard, and regained some of the magic, but overall, we still preferred the MF/Benchmark/Orchard combo by a significant margin. It did pretty much everything right.
Conclusion…
I felt we had a winner, yet my friend didn't seem convinced.
"Is there anything that it didn't get right?" That’s an intriguing question. I didn’t feel there was anything missing. I went through a wider range of my test tracks and nothing disappointed. Everything was reproduced with aplomb!
Then I had an insight. I think my friend was distracted by the fact that it sounded so good.
The MB2se is clearly more of a
“studio monitor” than a
“home stereo speaker”. Everything feels utterly effortless. Clarity is astounding. The ability to listen
into the music is superb. There is never a sense that it’s “trying hard”. Having spent time in many studios, this wasn’t unusual presentation for me, but I think it was a bit strange for my friend. I told him to spend some time listening to it. Then try listening to another system (like the fact.8 in the store), and see he still likes that presentation more. Worst case scenario, he could downgrade to the fact.12.
He is considering looking for a tube preamp. He feels indebted to the Audio Room for their help, so he would like to give them some business, but I’m not sure if their options will suit his extreme expectations. I have a Cary SLP-2002, which is known for being very good with PRaT, and he would need to find something similarly capable.
Overall, it’s been a great journey down the rabbit hole of amplifiers, tubes, etc. I’m back in my office listening to my own Wandla, directly into the SE400, which is plugged into a Hammond isolation transformer. It's driving the Ergo IX, and that seems to be a good combination.
Postscript...
Given my friend’s exacting expectations and history of dissatisfaction, I was concerned that he might never be appeased. However, I just received this message from him, posted to a chat space shared with a mutual friend. It gives me hope that things are going to turn out just fine.
So Mike is back home and I have spent the morning listening to our end state.
Am using the weekly Spotify recommend because it's a perfect test. Lossy (so if it still sounds good), all completely unknown to me (no bias), with a myriad of quality, recording & production techniques - so a completely randomized sample to judge from.
And what can I tell you? I am listening at significantly low volume and everything is being communicated... perfectly.
For the first time in living memory, not one single 'mistake'. Everything is correct. Not a single 'ear splinter' to be annoyed by, anywhere in sight. I can just listen to the music.
It has sufficient boogie now that I have gotten used to it so that's good. Mike previously remarked how there was so little effort expended by the amp and speakers that it is entirely unflappable. To Mark that was perceived as a lack of excitement, visceral-ness and Mike countered that I need to reset my expectations and traditional assess of what 'good' is; that struggling to reproduce is not excitement. I will have to think on that and get used to just how unflappable this system now is.
But the monitor sound of the speakers now with the right power are incapable of being shaken, only stirred. That's a new thing to these ears.
Jill [Mike's wife] who doesn't like to be [forcibly] 'engaged' by music could sit next to me and draw for hours at this dB level and yet I would be entertained. At a later point (busy this afternoon) I will put on some important CDs and see what happens when I turn the wick up and really energize the room. Can we rock my casbah...truly?
Anyway any tube Pre would need to be as good as or better than this combo for me to try and change it. And I am very apprehensive of even setting out on that path. It would definitely have to be this level of achievement (with tube buffer + Benchmark Pre) but even better to make it worth doing.
At this point tho there is nothing to be 'fixed' only additional "9s" to go and chase should I feel I really need to. And that determination will require quite a bit of listening.
For now, compliments to the chef(s). 
