I recently had some hum issues with my Odyssey Stratos HT-3 and it bugged me to to hither and back. After talking to Klaus about his superb 20 year warranty, I sent the 60 pound behemoth the unit across from the pacific coast to the Hoosier state.
Upon first look, Klaus decided to dump the original Stratos boards and strongly recommended an upgrade to SE boards, fix the speaking binding post insulators and do a complete re-bias. I obliged and thus the journey to fixing the unit began. It was not a short one though, after slightly more than 2 weeks, including rigorous testing he found that even the center channel had issues. And so he decided to upgrade that as well with a new center channel board unit.
Finally passing his burn in tests he finally relinquished the unit to FedEx for shipment back to me. When I first received the unit I heard a bit of rattling. Since I did not have a set of Hex keys, I did not open the unit. But as soon as I plugged in the unit my wife noticed a small flicker of light internally. I immediately shut it off. Coming off extremely worried I quickly went out and got a set of hex key, opened the top case and found a washer and metal standoff that held the upper channel enjoying it's new found liberty. Scrutinizing both the top and bottom boards and fuses, I found that the spark was isolated to the unused channel on top. One of the resistors was charred.
But the surprise was twofold, the upgrade Klaus made was far and above what he told me on the phone. He had massive cables, caps and the top board was a Kismet black board. He added additional grounding on both boards. It was a completely new unit with massive upgrades. I was very impressed. He even laser etched a name tag for the unit.
The first time I connected it I heard a loud hum. It was so loud I could hear it 10 feet away. I quickly got Klaus on the phone and he heard it too. We did some troubleshooting. The hum happened whenever I connected my Pioneer Elite AVR to the unit. There was no hum without the RCA connection, so the amp was completely silent. Step 2, connected the unit to the NAD Preamp, almost no hum this time. Tried cheater cable no improvement. Finally switched the audio cables and it helped tremendously. Ironically the audio cable I switched to is a cheap as hell generic one from Frys. The original cable I used was an expensive (overpriced) Monster cable that I bought. So while I have not reached a conclusion as to the cause of the hum, I am done performing any further experimentation as I can live with this.
Due to both Stratos SE and Tempest occupying the same chassis, it gets a little hot. I had to ventilate the unit at times with a little fan. The sound as of now is a little reserved, Klaus may have reduced the gain, but the details come out as I get immersed in the sound. The upper end is lightly rounded off but I love it since I am not a fan of bright sounding amps. The most important improvement I noticed is that it keeps up with the music and the nuances it brings out. While the slew rate for this amp is not published but I believe it can rock with the higher costing units out there. All in all it delivers a significantly improved sound from the Original Stratos I sent in. And if the day by day improvement carries on as the unit breaks in, I hope I am in for good surprise. Thanks to Klaus for his exemplary commitment and service to his products and customers.
