aerius

$13,000US for a hybrid amp that uses cheap-ass $10 tubes? Fuck that shit. For that kinda cash I can have someone custom build me a balanced 300B tube amp with Western Electric tubes.

Instead of coming in a small plain pizza box, it'll come in a medium corrugated pizza box.

This is why internet chat is banned from my computer. Few, if any things have a more detrimental effect on intelligence than internet chat, people lose 20 years off their age and half their IQ points upon entering a chatroom.

No, just one of their dealers on Avenue Road. They updated the Brat, same tweeter now as their big boys instead of the dinky little one they had before.

Thanks! Oh yes, the speakers that I'm writing the review on are the Acoustic Zen Adagio, the Fab Audio Brat, and the Living Voice Avatar. The finish on the Adagio is unreal, it looks like an $8000 speaker but goes for less than half that. Sounds pretty good too.

Research shows men are distracted by boobies

As you know, I'm banned from headfi for another 9 days. However I'm in the middle of writing up a mini-review & impressions of some speakers I've heard lately, and I need to pull up some of the posts I've written on head-fi. The google search doesn't pull up the posts I need. Here's what I need. I've posted impressions of the Dynaudio Audience 72SE, the Sonus Faber Concerto, and the B&W 804, most of it is in a thread started by mulveling in the cable forum on head-fi, with a few bits scattered around various other threads. I intend to expand on those posts, add in the impressions of the new speakers I've heard, and put it up as a new post in our speaker forum. So if guys don't mind, do a search on head-fi for my posts and either PM the info or post it here in this thread.

Just saw the schematic. Shouldn't be too hard to build your own, but parts cost is going to be stupidly high. Scrounging high quality audio transformers is almost impossible.

Do any of them mention penis enlargement? I get those in my email all the time....

Hmmm...no mention of tentacle sodomy...mmm...I think I'll pass on this one or wait for the DVD.

I'm not judging by apparent ability, I've actually heard all the speakers mentioned except the B&W 800, and going by the specs in the catalogue it's somewhere between the 801 & 802 in terms of deep bass. The Special 25 does have very strong & deep bass for a bookshelf, but there's no way it matches the 15" woofers on the 801, which I do admit were a bit overpowering in my friend's room which is part of why he sold them, the wife being the other...

My friend who owns the Special 25 has a room that's almost big enough for B&W 801's which he owned before getting the 25's. The C2 dealer's demo room was smaller in area but had a higher ceiling, overall I'm guessing the dealer's room was maybe 10-20% smaller in volume. Anyways, to me fullrange means the speaker equivalent of the Grado PS-1, which means big dinner plate sized woofers to move a ton of air. Examples would be the B&W 802, 801 & 800, Totem Wind or Shaman, something along those lines. Smaller floorstanders such as the B&W 803 & 804, Totem Hawk or Forest, the Living Voice Avatar & OBX-R would not be considered fullrange by me. Same thing with every bookshelf speaker I've heard to date.

Compared to other bookshelfs the Special 25 is definitely not lacking in bass, the only other bookshelf I know of that has as much bass is the Totem Mani-2, but compared to the floorstanding C2 there's a small but noticeable loss. Not much I have to admit, it just doesn't fill the room the way a large floorstander does, nor does it have that truly effortless feel in the lows.

2 words: Nevada. Brothel.

Looks like a transformer phase-splitter on the input, and I can't make out between that and the transformer outputs.

I heard the C2, wasn't much impressed, it was smooth & had decent detail, but it still had a lack of dynamics and had to be played quite loud to sound decent. In terms of overall balance, I find the Special 25 is still better and doesn't suffer from the veil & lack of dynamics as much, though it gives up some low bass. Also heard half the Focus & Audience series, those were pretty much unlistenable. As a fan of the Grado sound, the Dynaudio sound just ain't gonna work for me, it's too lifeless & sleep inducing.

I don't know, mine don't look anything like that. Mine have black T-shaped plates and the getter is on the bottom, taller bottle too. Reports from Audio Asylum say that there's several styles of GE 6SN7GTA's, and that they mostly sound the same, but I wouldn't know. Apparently I have the GE Canada version which is said to be the best one. BTW, my 2 pairs are actually 12SN7GTA's, same as the 6SN7 except the heater voltage & price.

GE 6SN7GTA's, they look a lot like the '52 Sylvania GT's. Doesn't have the detail, soundstage, refinement, smoothness and all that of say, the RCA grey glass tubes, but it has great drive and nice impact. It's a fun tube, I use it when I want to headbang to hard heavy music.

I ate a pretzel It gave me diarrhea Pretzels fucking suck

Your membership contributions were embezzled and thus the 3rd rate server can only be run for about 100 hours a week or so.

CD player for the Orsa was the Shanling T-200 using the tube outputs, and amps were the Vasant_K Final Edition and then the Shanling STP-80 integrated amp. It was marginally better with the tube amp but I felt it still completely sucked, and the shop owner agreed. The shop guy said he's tried it with a bunch of other amps and that's just how the speaker sounds, he doesn't like it but one of the other employees does and so do some customers. I think it's made for fans of dead lifeless studio monitors, or idiots who don't know better. Did I mention I hate Dynaudio? The only speaker of theirs I can stand is the Special 25, and even then I don't like it much anymore.

I took another trip to the local audio store so I could drool over the Shanling T-200 & T-300 CD players in person, but the main purpose was to check out small floorstanders & largish bookshelf speakers. I wanted to see if there was anything that could match the Living Voice Avatar at a lower cost. The summary is unfortunately not, but I did find a couple nice surprises. Keep in mind that my standard for good sound for small floorstanders is the Living Voice Avatar OBX-R, which is the tweaked out version of the Avatar. Anyway, first speaker up was the Elac FS 207 Limited Edition. These are German speakers with some kind of ribbon midrange/tweeter thingy. Well, the only good thing I could say about them is they had very extended highs, everything else was mediocre to sucky. The bass sucked, there was a hump in the 80-100Hz region and pretty much nothing above & below it. On basslines I could hear the notes fade in & peak as they hit the hump and then fade out again as the notes continued up or down the scale, same thing with piano, and drums, and any instrument with bass. The midrange was flat & dry, and this is out of the Shanling T-200 tube outputs and with a tube amp, and the highs were sibilant. Soundstaging & imaging was nothing to write home about either. In short, a very unsatisfactory suck-ass speaker. I hated it. Next was the JAS Audio Orsa speaker, a small bookshelf with a ribbon tweeter & Dynaudio woofer. This speaker served to re-affirm my hatred for Dynaudio drivers. The highs were pretty good, fast, clear, extended, unfortunately with a slight touch of sibilance which could probably be tuned out with tube rolls. And that's all the good I can say about it. Midrange & bass completely sucked. Veiled, undynamic, sterile, slow, it just sucked. Vocals sounded like someone had put a blanket in front of the microphone, drums had no impact at all, and piano was completely unlistenable. With piano, from the midrange up you hear a "plink" as the key is struck and that's it, no sound from the piano's soundboard or body, no resonances, nothing, just a sterile "plink" that might as well have come from a $50 Radio Shack keyboard. The bass was just overly tight & completely lacking in body. Drums have absolutely no energy, electric bass barely registers above the background noise, and the low notes on a grand piano are blended into a mushy mess. Slow, dead, lack of detail, absolutely fucking awful. Next up was the Oskar Aulos, featuring the Heil Tweeter, which I've heard of but never heard before. Holy crap is this tweeter ever good, very clean, detailed, and extended, and not a trace of sibilance, very smooth & easy to listen to. Unfortunately, the rest of the speaker, though good, doesn't quite match up to the tweeter and as a result there's a bit of a discontinuity in the frequency range. Midrange & treble is good, but the bass doesn't keep up in speed & detail, and sounds a bit too boomy & slow. My standard test for bass speed & detail is "In the Springtime of his Voodoo" by Tori Amos, only the very best gear can cleanly separate the low notes of the grand piano and keep them from blending into each other, and on top of that keep the electric bass in balance and not blending into the piano. As expected, the low piano notes blended, but at least the bass stayed separate. Tone wasn't bad, a bit too thick & boomy in some places which didn't help with the separation either, but at least it's on the warm side instead of being cold & sterile, I could live with that. Midrange was pretty sweet, balanced on the warm side, male vocals had nice weight & depth to them and Jeff Martin of The Tea Party doesn't sound castrated like he does on some speakers. Next up was "Plenty" by Sarah McLachlan off a promo CD, somewhat similar to the Freedom Sessions version but better. Multi-tracked vocals from all over the soundstage, fun for checking imaging capabilities. Sarah sounded pretty sweet, not the most detailed I've heard since some of the subtle shifts in her voice were lost but still quite satisfying. Nice soundstage & imaging too, especially in the highs. I'm liking those Heil tweeters. Put on "Space Dog" by Tori Amos to check for dynamics, did pretty well here. Not the hardest or fastest bass impact I've heard, but it has good body & weight to the sound. Drums on all my music finally sound complete, and I finally have a bass groove. Overall, a darn good speaker, especially given the cost of about $2400 CDN. Last speaker of the day was the Aurum Cantus Leisure 3 CA speaker, definitely the prettiest of the bunch. Soundwise, pretty similar to the Oskars, but the highs weren't as clean and the bass was a bit tighter & more detailed. It's another ribbon tweeter design, but the highs get a bit sibilant, especially noticeable with any song off Tori's "Little Earthquakes" album. Like the Oskar, it's on the warm side, but it is a bit closer to neutral than the former, and sounds clearer from the lower midrange on down. Basically, the Oskar has the edge in highs and the Aurum's a bit better on lows, and are pretty close in the midrange. Overall it's a tough choice between the Oskar & the Aurum Cantus, the former has slightly better sound but god is it ever fugly. The Aurum Cantus is damn pretty but I'm not sure if I can deal with the slight sibilance over the long term.

He was on the same floor but a few rooms down from me so it wasn't too bad. But if he was my roommate I probably would've shoved the CD up his ass.

There was a guy in my dorm when I was in university who played "Believe" by Cher at least 5 times a day, if it weren't for the fact that he was a chick magnet I would've kicked his ass on general principle.

Yup, isn't it wonderful?