On Sep 21, 12:15 pm, Andy Evans wrote:
Popped in this afternoon. All the usual suspects, I guess. I took a CD
and played it on quite a few systems. Mainly disappointing. Chord
probably the worst, alongside Bauhorn. Both were significantly
coloured, with the Chord CD player adding some interesting pops to the
CD and the amp some earthquake low frequencies. I was glibly told it
was a bad recording and this was the microphone overloading. Strange
how it never happened on any other system ever. Bauhorn system was
like listening inside a bucket - absolutely dreadful.

Usual monstrously huge amps sold by Audio Research and McIntosh - have
the circuits changed since the 60s? Anyone for a re-tube? From the
factory, natch.

Loads of turntables and arms about, and a guy selling vinyl to happy
users. Valves accounted for about half the amplification. Box speakers
for almost all the speakers - what happened to all the electroctatics
and ribbons? Ribbons, of course, as tweeters were quite common. Pinsh
had a longer ribbon which sounded rather nice.

Good sounds from Max Townshend - nice chap too. Another room had a
good Avalon clone speaker with those inverted Thiel ceramic speakers.
It worked for Avalon, and it's still a good recipe for clean sound.
The guy demonstrating is forming English Valve Amps - evidently more
news later.

My favourite room was the Pure Sound one of Guy Sergeant. He had some
unexpectedly good speakers from Germany, which were driven by his own
design Push Pull 2a3 amp, made in China with obviously good
transformers. Clean, clear and remarkably glitch-free sound finally
did everything pretty much right. About £600 for the speakers and
£1,700 for the amp. Dealers margins a typical 50%, so you can work
back to the ex-factory price. You could pay a huge amount more money
and get worse sound.

Andy

Thanks for that, Andy. Are you actually in the market for bought hi-
fi?

The last time I was in a high-end store was probably fifteen years
ago. The guy had some nice stuff, of which the best was the Audio
Innovations amps (made under the second, tube management, between
Qvortrup leaving to found ANUK and AI becoming merely another crappy
silicon brand). One of the best amps AI ever made, in a notably
distinguished lineup, was a PP 2A3. It might have been called "The
First". But I had just finished building an Audio Innovations Classic
Stereo 25, a seriously good amp they sold as a kit, so I didn't buy
it; I should have because it is actually harder now to find a good
tube amp unless you build it yourself or go shopping for the old
favourites still in production (Triode Supply Japan's MIyabe, a
bargain too for what it is; but I have two already).

Hell, maybe it is just like the clever line Dave Plowman threw out the
other day: In the golden age everyone complained that everything was
yellow. Maybe I should just fix up some broken, known-good amps. Or
build a new one...

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
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