[Skilly]

That is a good looking tube amp. Please do share your listening experiences if you do try them with the aca amps. You seem to have a glut of amps. If you decide to sell the aca amps, I would love to talk to you about it.

Scott

[Stephen Scharf]

That is a good looking tube amp. Please do share your listening experiences if you do try them with the aca amps. You seem to have a glut of amps. If you decide to sell the aca amps, I would love to talk to you about it.

Scott

Hi Scott!

Oh, I definitely plan on using them with the ACA amps; that's part of the reason I built the Encores. Just haven't gotten around to switching all the cables around from one amp to the other yet. I recently had a total hip replacement on my left hip and I still have some limited mobility with respect to getting down on the floor behind the rack and disconnecting speaker cables from amp binding posts! 

I'll get around to it, though, for sure. I think the ACAs will be a nice match to the treble response of the Encores, which at this point are pretty revealing and on the analytical side of things. The highs are not as refined as those on my Harbeth 30.2s, but hey, its very early hours yet. Regardless, I think the Encores will pair very nicely with ACAs.

As for a glut of amps, no, just the C-J and the ACAs; and I only finished the build on the ACAs right before my hip surgery in the first part of August.

Both the ACAs and X-LS Encores were "fun project" to explore DIY.

Plus, I wanted to experience one of Nelson's amp designs and one of Danny's speaker designs.  It's all in good fun...

I *do* have this beautiful C-J CT5 preamp for sale, however...

[hk29]

How do they compare with the harbeth 30?

[Stephen Scharf]

How do they compare with the harbeth 30?

I'm not going to form any conclusions until the Encores are fully run-in with 30 hours or so, acc. to RustyTAC above.

I A/B'd them at the end of my first night with them with only 2 hours on the Encores, and the Harbeth 30.2s had it all over the Encores in virtually all areas, but that's not a fair or accurate assessment by any stretch, as the Encores had not even started to open up...so, well have to wait.

What I will say is the Encores are getting better and better with every hour on them, and they are starting to sound very nice, indeed. They also image really well.

Stay tuned...

[Hobbsmeerkat]

I've got maybe 100-150 hours on mine so far with the first hour playing some quick test music then played 30 hours playing brown noise & the rest being split between music & podcasts and I'm still thrilled with mine, I even took the leap a few weeks ago to get tube connectors, and it's only made them that much better, even with cheap, 14-gauge zip cord. (That will change once I order the components & cables for my ongoing NX-Studio build tho)

[Stephen Scharf]

I've got maybe 100-150 hours on mine so far with the first hour playing some quick test music then played 30 hours playing brown noise & the rest being split between music & podcasts and I'm still thrilled with mine, I even took the leap a few weeks ago to get tube connectors, and it's only made them that much better, even with cheap, 14-gauge zip cord. (That will change once I order the components & cables for my ongoing NX-Studio build tho)

If ts in your budget, get some Shunyata Research speaker cables; trust me, it will be worth it. The Venom are affordable and really excellent. They were my speaker cables until about a year ago (In fact, I need to get on the stick and get mine listed for sale...hmmm, I'll get on that tomorrow).

[hk29]

Thanks!!  Fair enough.  I really like the finish!  They really nice.