Tubes and HT

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Update on my previous post. ^ ^ ^

Having a problem with the Moody Blues DVD mentioned earlier, I wondered why I was hearing things the way I was when my other tests went well. As it turns out, I needed to make some changes in the way I played the disc, though there was no problem before.

Having the Pioneer 09 output set to "2 Channel" already, I went into the speaker setup and found that the L/R, center and surrounds were all set to "Large." I turned off everything but the L/R setting and tried the disc again. No significant changes I could hear. Then it hit me that the Pioneer's "DTS Downmix" feature is set to "2 Channel"; I'd been selecting Dolby Digital 2.0 in the disc's menu. So I set the disc to play at DTS 5.0, which meant the player would downmix to two channels. Immediately, the sound was both louder and fuller, with even more bottom. The musical details I wasn't hearing before were more audible, though perhaps still not quite up to the LS3. But I think I could live with that. And the hall ambience is back; it sounds like the Moodies are playing in a concert hall again (which the Royal Albert Hall is).

So having this new information, I intend to put things back the way they were, with the Transparent ICs doing preamp to power amp duty and re-installing the Kimber Hero on the Pioneer. I may put the JJ tubes back into the 2300 just to see what happens. Either way, I'm going to pull the second pair of Mullards out of the MM section to keep as backups and re-insert the stock tubes there. This means the return of the Aragon (nice movie title) phono stage to the system.

[prepress]

I put the JJ tubes back into the 2300, and things have filled in more. I also added Transparent Plus IC on the blu-ray, replacing the Kimber Hero. There is a WW Electra on the 2300 as well. The JJ tubes have worked well for concert DVDs; I'll need to try them with a movie soon. But indications are they'll be good. I may have found my HT tubes.