Sophia Electric Baby Amp

[djdonis]

Fenor,

I couldn't go a day without my 2a3 Paramours much less sell them.

OK. I'd like to invite my new friend DJ ( the golden eared Charlotte Philharmonic violinist ) who is a recent convert to SET to chime in here and posts his thoughts.

...I graduated to SET from variety of SS amps in my past. I owned a ton (literally) of sound equipment - Adcom, Crown, QSC, Pioneer (the C/M stuff, Elites). I worked as FOH sound engineer, recording studio so I am familiar with most of high end pro equipment as well. I worked as a club DJ in NYC...lots of bad equipment there...

I am also a professional musician and an electronics DIY'er.

In my quest for "musical" hi-fi I auditioned a lot of amp-speaker combos, some in very high dollar range, tubes and OB/single driver speakers were never on my list - they were largely unknown to me. Harman doesn't want you to buy them, it just doesn't fit into megawatts marketing.

I was looking for the ultimate refinement in sound quality that would please my ears. I started auditioning Tekton, Zu, Omega speakers that were driven by those weird looking tube amps.

So here I am. I have sold all my SS gear and all the high power "full range" speakers. All my systems are SET amp based, driving full range single driver or open baffle speakers. My ears couldn't be happier.

Recently I brought my MiniWatt - Tekton 6.5 combo to a week-long symphony orchestra gig and let my friends listen to it. They didn't know squat about tubes or Fostex drivers, but their mouths were hanging open while listening to the music (spotify, via iPhone!). I demonstrated how the same music sounds with SS amp (I had small JVC amp). One of my colleagues was so impressed with the combo that he bought the speakers from me and wrote the names of amps that I recommended (I didn't sell my MW to him). He said that he never heard SUCH sound before.

We are talking professional musicians here with ears that feed their families. One audition was enough to make them fall in love with tube sound through high efficiency single driver speaker.

Now, SET amp was my first tube amp. I tried other amps but always came back to SET, zero feedback design. My next step is to find a SET OTL amp to audition...

Even order harmonics of SET amp are the same harmonics that are produced by acoustic instruments (string and woodwinds especially). That may be the reason why SET amps are described as being "musical", they mimic the properties of musical instruments themselves. Even order harmonic distortion could be described as "overtones", and these musical overtones is exactly the thing that makes music sound rich and alive, they are non-fatiguing (as opposed to odd order harmonics of SS, push-pull, GNF designs). Violin sound is full of harmonic "distortion" (all even order). Anybody comparing electric violin with acoustic violin will be able to tell the difference, even though the strings and the pitch played are the same.

Bit of theory: the second order harmonic of first octave A (440 hz) is 880hz, which is the same A but an octave higher, therefore is not perceptible as "distortion" because it is in unison with the original tone. Same goes for 4th, 6th, 8th....order harmonics.