i received a pair of 100se's the other day. they replace a pair of high quality class d amps used to drive the mids and highs of my emerald physics cs1.3's, which i've been using for the last five or six months.
the original amps left me with the nagging feeling that the 1.3's were simply not coming to life. the soundstage was wide and instrument placement was stable and accurate, timing seemed right, but the music itself lacked vitality. it seemed like a diagram of the music, rather than the music itself. just impressions, but i felt my mind wandering where it should have been locked onto the music.
well, all this changed when i replaced those two amps with a pair of 100se's.
i have to admit that up now i've always been something of a skeptic with regards to the importance of amplification. how much difference could an amplifier really make? watts is watts, right?
at any rate, the difference
these amps make is quite shocking.
with the 100se's, the 1.3's have just come to life. whereas previously the soundstage was flat and the highs were analytical and thin, now it's as though the musicians have stepped out of the vertical plane and are interacting with the room from the entire front half of my listening space. as i said, the difference -- the
magnitude of the difference -- is shocking.
when things are working right, you can't tear yourself away from listening. and indeed, last night i spent four hours sampling my music collection to see what i've been missing over the last six months.
getting all the components to line up and play nicely with each other is surely a black art. i haven't the foggiest idea
why the 100se's match up so well with these extremely sensitive open-baffle speakers, but they most certainly do.
thanks dan!
previous systems include: b&w 801-III, apogee divas, krell fpb300, krell fpb600, too many preamps and cd players to enumerate ...
the current system electronics, containing the new modwright amps:
http://www.nsl.com/audio/new/7.JPG