Quote:
Originally Posted by C220MC275
Hi Serge,
Yes, you discovered the magic of a well designed SET amp.
For myself, I regret it very much but finally I will have to let the Verdier's go.
Stephen and Alberto, I was about to pm you about that but Serge gave me an opportunity to mention it here.
I finally don't keep them for 2 reasons :
- the voices were voiced a bit too high, with some kind of peak in the high mids. Switching back to the Mcs gave me more naturalness. The voices are more true to the reality with the 2301's and that is very important for me.
- instrumental music was more intoxicating than the 2301's in a way difficult to describe. They seem to connect with your emotions in a more direct way. But after 10 days, I realized that the price to pay for it was too high for me : some recordings were not sounding good at all compared to the 2301's.
I have read these "mixed emotions" that would bring SET amps on a review the web ( I think I could find the link and send it to you ) and it described perfectly what happened to me. First I loved them with everything. Then, after some days, I discovered that the sound of some recordings was completely out of the game. While others were still sounding wonderful. To summarize, these amps are extremely transparent generally speaking and they are all but forgiving. Less than perfect recordings sound truly "less than perfect" . I realized that I preferred much more the overall more forgiving sound of the 2301's. From what Alberto and Stephen describe, I doubt that Shindo SET amps could sound this way.
And I will be very curious to read your comments on the Ayon as time goes by and you listen to more and more recordings....
Cheers,
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Wow, we are getting quite a few exciting twists and turns on this forum these days.
First of all, good of you to trust your ears and not give in to "peer pressure" - bad name for it, but you get the idea.
Second, Stephen and I have very different amps. While the Shindo preamps just get "better" as you go up the line, the power-amps have their own sonic signature - there is not better or worse, just "
I like this better." The Montille and the Cortese sound like two VERY different amps.
What surprises me a LOT is that the Verdier SET sounded non-forgiving to you. That's the opposite from my experience with SETs - they are quite forgiving - that's why I love them. All the SET's I've heard smooth bad recordings, the better ones manage to do the smoothing without sacrificing detail. Typically, the people who give up on SETs do so because some of them lack the "SLAM" of push-pull or because they are too forgiving.
Interesting results Jerome. Good things you had an in-home audition, that's always the safest thing to do when you are not sure.
Wow, lots of interesting development - can't wait to see what happens next on AA
.
Alberto