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Tannoy Speakers Over 80 Years of Audio Invention

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  #11  
Old 06-15-2011, 09:15 PM
PHC1 PHC1 is offline
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Originally Posted by Alberto View Post
There is something very cool about not having a single solid state device in the audio chain vinyl -> tubes -> speakers.

I thought about making my listening room a digital and solid-state free zone ... but the fact is that the Shindo + Tannoys sound very, VERY, good even with the digital (at least with MDA1000). I am getting ZERO listening fatigue and lots of deliciousness from digital + all tubes and SET. The main area where vinyl has the edge over digital in my system is in a more holographic presentation and wider+taller soundstage, but I get none of the digital glare and nasties.

I tell you, tubes running SET are the closest thing to a deliciousness control I can think of - musical bottom, magic midrange and smooth highs, who can ask for more?

Alberto
Alberto, I had a vision for this room of being "analog" only but decided to add a CDP just for variety and occasional digital playback. The Ayon CDP I have is also tubed though. Sounds very smooth and musical but vinyl still has more naturalness and magic!

The 30 triode watts do have a very bold control over the Tanny's and bass is super nice, at least to my liking. No dry, overly dramatic bass notes here, it simply recreates the body of any bass instrument with more naturalness and less drama. The texture and harmonics of the lower octaves are more fleshed out with the delicious roundness, harmonic bloom and "wetness".
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  #12  
Old 06-15-2011, 09:17 PM
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Serge,

Congrats.

I would venture to bet that the Shindo will bring you, yet another step closer to the music

Good luck in your quest.

Stephen
Stephen, it will be interesting to hear how much more magic Shindo call pull off.
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  #13  
Old 06-15-2011, 09:33 PM
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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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  #14  
Old 06-15-2011, 09:37 PM
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That is an incredible sounding amp, best tube amp I've heard yet.
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  #15  
Old 06-15-2011, 10:16 PM
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Originally Posted by C220MC275 View Post
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,
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
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  #16  
Old 06-15-2011, 10:23 PM
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Originally Posted by C220MC275 View Post
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.
Jerome...I am willing to bet that in part (a big part) the issue you were having was due to a mismatch of the Verdier SETs with your speakers. It's hard to say without seeing an impedance of the EB1is but as a 4ohm nominal speaker, I am willing to bet there are significant portions of the frequency spectrum where the speakers dip below 4 ohms. If I had to guess, there might be a dip in impedance in the portion of the midrange where you were getting tipped up sense to vocal timbres. SETs really like to see benign (i.e., 8 ohms and above) and flat impedance, and the Tannoys that Alberto and Serge have on hand present a much flatter and much easier load to their partnering amps. I am not sure what you were experiencing when you say with lesser quality recordings, the sonics were out of the game, but again it could be the overall timbral balance was tipped up because the EB1is in the bass and sections of the midrange were too tough a load on the Verdiers. Ofcourse I am guessing here because I have not been able to find an impedance curve for your speakers but I am willing to bet if you had Tannoys/Coincident/Merlin or any of a number of SET-friendly speakers on hand, you would have had a different take on the Verdier SET amps .

Serge...sorry for hijacking the thread.
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  #17  
Old 06-15-2011, 10:24 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alberto View Post
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
Hi Alberto,

They had slam for sure, but less than the 2301's and you would not be surprised at this.
About the forgiving part, yes I was finally surprised myself. maybe it comes from a bad speaker match with the PMC.
But I think more about the extreme transparency of these amps.
When I connected them to the MDA1000 variable outputs, the sound was just awful. Connected again to the C1000, it was magic and wonderful....on some recordings and less than good on others. First time I hear so much difference between the MDA 1000 internal preamp and the C1000P. The level of transparency of these amps is out of this world.
This could be the reason why I had these findings finally.
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  #18  
Old 06-15-2011, 10:26 PM
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Serge,

Sorry to hijack ypur thread.....AGAIN !
But my remarks are about a SET amp, and I thought you could be interested in it....
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  #19  
Old 06-15-2011, 10:28 PM
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Originally Posted by cmalak View Post
Jerome...I am willing to bet that in part (a big part) the issue you were having was due to a mismatch of the Verdier SETs with your speakers. It's hard to say without seeing an impedance of the EB1is but as a 4ohm nominal speaker, I am willing to bet there are significant portions of the frequency spectrum where the speakers dip below 4 ohms. If I had to guess, there might be a dip in impedance in the portion of the midrange where you were getting tipped up sense to vocal timbres. SETs really like to see benign (i.e., 8 ohms and above) and flat impedance, and the Tannoys that Alberto and Serge have on hand present a much flatter and much easier load to their partnering amps. I am not sure what you were experiencing when you say with lesser quality recordings, the sonics were out of the game, but again it could be the overall timbral balance was tipped up because the EB1is in the bass and sections of the midrange were too tough a load on the Verdiers. Ofcourse I am guessing here because I have not been able to find an impedance curve for your speakers but I am willing to bet if you had Tannoys/Coincident/Merlin or any of a number of SET-friendly speakers on hand, you would have had a different take on the Verdier SET amps .

Serge...sorry for hijacking the thread.
Cyril,

I think that you are absolutely right !
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  #20  
Old 06-15-2011, 11:27 PM
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Jerome, I am not surprised at your findings. The speakers have to be designed with low tube wattage use from the get go or the results will be unpredictable. No wonder some recordings may have sounded good while others did not. It's not even the efficiency as much as it is the tube friendly impedance curve that doesn't load the amp down that matters the most. 4 ohm nominal impedance does not work very well with most lower powered tubes, especially single ended triodes. That usually means that there is a dip even lower than 4 ohms somewhere and exactly how low, is hard to say but tubes are not very good current sources like solid state amps are. The 4 ohm speakers make it easier for the solid state amps which produce more power into lower impedance. The 2301's may be ok since they are push-pull and are 300w after all, not 30w.

I am surprised that Mr. Verdier didn't mention that to you. Sure his SET amps worked on your speakers in terms of making sound but was it an optimal situation?
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