It's been a good 10 years or so since I purchased my Khartago Kismet from Klaus. Sold it a couple years later because of the speaker I later went with, Martin Logan SL3's. They needed more power than the poor Khartago Kismet could offer.
So today I just made a 430 mile round trip to pick up an absolutely mint pair of Stratos mono amps. Built new in 2019, set in an audio cabinet and never touched since, powering a pair of highly efficient Legacy Audio Whispers.
These amps do not have a mark on them, and they are now powering my Magnepan 1.7i's. One of my goals for this system has been to drop several 20amp dedicated lines in this room, and these amps are going to make that happen this coming fall. Reason being that I get some kind of "buzzing" coming through the speakers anytime I run an amp that uses an actual ground. An amp like the Emotiva I have been using is completely dead silent because it doesn't have a ground. So somewhere in this house there's some nasty noise back-feeding into the ground.
This is why you see the Stratos amps plugged into that heavy duty extension cable that my father made many many moons ago. I have it plugged into the same outlet on the sidewall where the source gear is. Definitely not optimal by any means, but that annoying buzzing has been reduced quite a bit in doing so.
It's not a ground loop because for one, it's not a hum, just a buzz coming through the tweeters. Secondly, I can disconnect the XLR's at the amp end, or at the preamp end, and the buzz remains. I have one single cheater plug in the house, and if I use that on either amp, the buzz goes anyway and the amps are dead silent, but that's not the correct way of fixing things, nor do I want to possibly damage the amps in the process.
I guess this old extension cable will hold me over until fall gets here in ol' crappy, sunny Florida (reached 102*F today). My electrician friend is retired and does small jobs like this on the side. I don't expect him to go climbing around in a 150* attic, not to mention he won't anyway.
Anyway, a few pics of the system, which has matured significantly since the last time I posted here, including a Pass Labs XP-20 preamp and Auralic Altar G1 streamer that I just picked up in the past couple of months as well as the Maggie 1.7i's that I purchased a little over a year ago.
Sir Bentley already approves of the new amps!
