34 minutes ago, justin said:

Has anyone heard from mikhail or rudistor lately? Possibly a collaborative effort?

Don't know if it's true, the rumor from the dealer of rudistor in Shanghai said that the designer passed away a few years ago🙄, and they still have some unsold rudi amps in stock...

On 6/25/2023 at 11:21 AM, udurbalanced said:

I heard this yesterday at Canjam with a pair of brand new SR-007s, which the Viva rep made a point to tell me since that would apparently explain any deficiencies in the sound. Didn't spend a lot of time with it because I was waiting for the Grand Cayman with the X9K to be available but it was very okay for a $32k amp. 

 

On 6/26/2023 at 2:42 AM, Kung said:

Still haven't heard viva stx, however, stx seems to be marketed as an amplifier that perfectly matches the x9000 in china. 

btw~The actual selling price is about $10000 not $32k, those products are always sold well below their list price. 

 

I also got a chance to spend a fair amount of time with STX in a quiet environment recently. Ive also spent significant time with GC and 3ES Elite (and some very short time with a kerry T2). Honestly, for X9k, its truly a really really good pairing IMO pulling away from the other options Ive heard. That said, its by far the most variable amp I've heard when changing cans. Some things work excelently IMO (X9k, 007mk2, L700, HE60) and other sound outright broken (Corina, shang sr). Its not the same kinds of changes, but id almost compaire it to running a current drive amp (like the KG transconductance and some old bakoon options) where some cans absolutely shine (HD800S, T1.2) and others absolutely fall apart (focals most notably). I had assumed it was the transformers just not playing well with some cans, but if its not OTC I wonder what in the topology is causing this. Its even more confusing since the Z10E never had anything just sound broken on it even if it didnt have the juice needed.

Oh my, why that mess?

Because idiots think this sounds good?  What gets me are the cheap parts and just pure stupidity of using power supply caps which are known to fail as a dead short for audio coupling. 

17 hours ago, ivanouk said:

Oh my, why that mess?

Viva Egoista STX, are you brave enough to listen to it?

good news it probably will not sound like crap for long. 💣 💥

bad news you probably will need a new house 🚒

and unless you took the regeneration perk, a new body 🚑

 

On 8/4/2023 at 6:38 PM, spritzer said:

Because idiots think this sounds good?  What gets me are the cheap parts and just pure stupidity of using power supply caps which are known to fail as a dead short for audio coupling. 

I confirm you it sounds very good, using ears, not eyes ..don't mean is the best. However curious soldering.

I seriously doubt that but then again, people paid good money for the Single Power, Woo Audio, Cavalli, LTA, Ray Samuels amps (and the list goes on and on) thinking they sounded good...

Found some more pics of the Viva STX which I'm okey borrrowing knowing how much this guy has taken from here.  Seriously, this thing is so fucking bad.  

I think this might be the same unit as was posted before, very similar burn marks on that electrolytic cap... which is always a sign of quality.  Rifa caps and all that but that switch floating on some hot glue.  Yup... pure quality for only 12k$.  

Wow, that looks badly hand-made at the level of Cary Audio standards.

^^ ha, that is what I was going to say - reminds me of my 300sei (then it went silent). 

I'm slow on the uptake.  Is "Cary Audio standards" a good or a bad thing?

P2P always looks like a bit of a clusterfuck to untrained eyes.  "That's well done" and "What a complete and utter shitshow" aren't that visually different.  Unless it's McAllister (or late stage Rotenberg) tier work.

at least the cary has no flammable wool tuning elements.

In my humble opinion the hand made point to point soldering of the Cary products I’ve seen isn’t very good.

 

3 hours ago, Knuckledragger said:

P2P always looks like a bit of a clusterfuck 

I think there's just a weird fetishization of ptp wiring now, with the worse it looks the better it must be. I own an amp from this company (it was a gift) and all I can say, as a person comfortable working on amps, is that I sure hope it doesn't break (you can zoom in on the third picture for the hot (melt glue) mess.)

 

Edited June 13Jun 13 by dsavitsk

Shit that's bad.  I'm sure all those 10% carbon comp resistors add a magical tone...  

There is no reason hand-made, point-to-point wiring cannot be done right.

 

Edited June 14Jun 14 by mwl168