"Fear & Loathing On The Digital Trail'
Episode IV
(with apologies to HST and GL)
My first exposures to digital amps were rather shallow, but started almost a year ago when Wayne gave a nice room full of JJAZ amp at the last RMAF. I got a short, polite demo as one of many, trying to make every room at the show.
Then Wayne was graceful enough to send the JJAZ amps on a bit of a 'look & listen' tour. We fellas at the GAS group got an opportunity for a listen at a group get together, but regretably, there was such a crush of various gear to hear at that gathering, that nothing got a long listen. At the time, the idea of digital amps was a relatively new one to me, except for what I had read, but I expected more than I heard. Regretably, the time spent listening to that particular amp passed quickly, but I have to admit that "I didn't get 'it'." Music was reproduced faithfully, but there seemed to be little 'pizzazz', so-to-speak that would recommend to me to want to listen to what it had to say over any other particular piece of gear. I do remember that the amps in Denver didn't sound like that...
At the time, I was a recent convert to tube amplification necessitated by acquiring Altec 19 speakers accidentally. My critical listening abilities had been fractured from my move from solid state Bryston / Vandersteen gear to something completely different. I have found for myself that nothing is more goading than not understanding something I want to...
I could digress with my experimenting with a Sonic Impact amp, and then the Teac 30 w/channel. Both of these amps fed into the 19s brought something to the party, especially when paired behind my Hagerman Technology Clarinet tube pre-amp. These things were significantly different from the ST-35 clone tube amp I have predominantly used. In spite of what I thought I knew about what I wanted to hear from my music, I continued to be intrigued and to listen.
Enter Wayne and an offer to listen to his battery powered 41hz Amp 3 that had been sampled by others.
Up to this point, I had only been hearing 'stock' units, but this was an opportunity to listen to a piece tweaked to other's idea of something nice in the right circumstances.
When I eventually got the amp and was sure it was charged, I set up to listen.
My listening was sporadic at first. My 140 lb speakers got placed in the attic room in the spring, which is approximately 15 x 24 feet in size, speakers on the short wall at one end. Summer heat did not always cooperate with when I wanted to listen. Hundred plus degree days are not kind even to an insulated attic.
My best efforts to cool the room DID get some A/C piped up there, a dysfunctional powered attic fan removed, and me falling above the ceiling and tearing a rotator cuff in my shoulder. In spite of 'frozen shoulder' and physical therapy, I pressed on with my original intent to hear what it was that Ed Schilling and Dmason found in this amp.
Okay, stage set, 'trials' reported and endured, I tried to forget what I knew, but it wasnt' easy.
My list of cds listened to for varieties of reasons included:
Darol Anger's "Heritage"
Pat Metheny's 'One Quiet Nite', 'Imaginary Day' and 'Beyond the Missouri Sky'
'The Sopranos' first season cd
soundtrack to '2001:a space odyssey'
Madeleine Peyroux' 'Dreamland'
Eva Cassidy 'Imagine'
Jacqui Naylor's 'East/West'
Allman Bros' Fillmore Concerts
and of course:
The Grateful Dead's first 'Live Dead' album.
These cd's are all favorites, and each have doses of highs and lows, female vocal, fiddle or welll played bass. Live albums were typical for being good recordings of 'live' energy.
Well, on first listen, this Amp3 was much like the SI and Teac, and little like my tube amps.
Switching between these three amps, the SI was quickly left in the dust and abandoned. The Teac stuck around a little longer, as I had over 200 hours on it and it had been sounding quite 'musical.' At this point, I think that the major point that the Teac had going for it compared to the Amp3 was plain-ass 'power'. The Altec 19s have been reported to to be 99-101 db efficient. YES, they will play with only 2 watts, BUT I have found that they 'blossom' with more power poured into them, especially given the size of my room.
HOWever, in spite of the 'power' crown given over to the Teac, the Amp 3 was more refined on every level.
There was more precision with the Amp3, from top to bottom, and at first it was hard to understand what I was listening to.
An example 'listen' might be made with the tune used for the openning of 'The Sopranos'.
With my old Bryston/Vandersteen rig, bass was extreme on this cut, and apparently quite intentional.
On the all-tube setup on the 19's, bass gets quite bloom-and-boomy'.
On the Amp 3, where did it go???!! It couldn't be a mistake, but it piqued my interest even more.
As I found with subsequent albums, bits and pieces were balanced a lot differently than I had been used to listening to them.
Ultimately, I launched into weeks of philosophical wonderings and discussions of what it is we look for in our gear: true reproduction of whatever the sound engineer had in mind, or some tailored sound that we all fight to achieve in our individual quests of 'synergy'.
I would certainly welcome further discussion somewhere else with anyone wanting to try and flesh this out.
Meanwhile, back at the Amp 3, I found that after very little time, what started well would get tiring and brittle sounding. Perhaps an hour of acceptable listening, perhaps a little more.
Phap.
Now, since I got my 19's over a year ago, it has been a battle to hear how good that they could play, mostly due to their reputation on the web versus what I was hearing in my home. Hell, maybe they have something worn out or broken in them.
In the midst of the summer heat, 6day workweek and in more-than-a-little desperation, I querried fellow GASser Mark Blackmore if he would like to hear the Amp 3 with his Cain and Cain Abby's. Mark had already tried several of the early 'vanilla' digital offerings... A 140 mile round trip to his place one evening after work gave us the opportunity to play the Amp 3 with Wayne's M-80 speaker cables, using Mark's CJ tubed cd and dac, since they had volume control.
I brought the same music noted above and we sampled quite a bit of it.
And the more I listened, the more I liked it!!
I have read about the Abby's, including comments on their shortcomings basswise, but never heard any.
Long-story-short: I found in that evening the most favored of voice coming from the Abby's. I really liked what I heard, and as much as my favored music was etched in my head, there was nothing missing at all, except perhaps boomy bass. That is *not* to say there was a lack of bass! It was controlled and there at levels comparative to all of the other instruments. My female vocalists and fiddle/violin pieces seemed liquid and delicious.
I could go on and on about each cut, but won't. I was hearing everything I could imagine wanting to hear from this combination, and put it to a real test with my 'Live Dead' album. This album is probably one that I have listened to most often of anything I have ever owned, numbering surely in the thousands. Turned on to the Dead when they openned for Iron Butterfly in the 60's, they have been my consistent favorite band, but fellow GASsers might confirm that I have tried not to be fanatic with them about the band, in spite of probably being silently fanatic.
This concert music was released about 1969 or 70, and for me, it exceeds the limits of that day's technology,
What I heard on Mark's Abby's was so much better than what I had been listenning to at home. We didn't have time enough to hear it all, since 3/4 of it is one 'jam' (3 record sides on vinyl), but all that I heard just tripped my trigger and reminded me so well of what they sounded like 'way back when'.
Eventually, the time was ending as I still had hours to drive and a job to go to the next day. We listened to the Amp3 for probably 2 1/2 to 3 hours in total, and it never lost steam. Curiouser and curiouser.
Coming back to my system, back in went the Amp3 to try and reproduce SOME of the magic I had heard with the Abby's.
Typically, in my room, the speakers are about 3' from side and back wall. I've found sitting about 12' away from them, typicallyl good.
Well, for this part of the adventure, I was assuming maybe THAT is what my problems were. I moved forward. I rotated the speakers inwards. Then outwards.. I moved them. I moved ME.
Now at this point, I should make reference that like many, I tend towards 'louder is better'. At this point in my thrashing, my wife came upstairs, having heard things moving around from downstairs.. As she has many times, she asked me to turn it down. Not only that but to turn it down, sit down and *listen*.
What a concept!
Well, for one of the few times at that request, I did as she asked.
And found what I was looking for.
At this point, I got the best sound from the Amp 3 that I had experienced with my room and gear. Fifteen feet away seated, volume at a rather 'medium' (low) level, I was getting crystalline, balanced play from all of the musicians. The music was clear, musical and refined.
Now, at this time, it had been months since I had listened to my tube amps. My mental battle with the conundrums of what I hear vs. what I thought I *wanted* to hear, vs. what the sound engineer laid down was coming together in my head in a way without words, so it has been difficult to relay to you, Dear Reader. Hackneyed axioms I myself have used from 'toe-tapping' to 'clarity' fail to relate what I enjoyed.
Ulitmately, of all my cuts played in that session, what put me over the top was my Live Dead album. Calmly listening to 'Dark Star' in stellar acid magic, I felt myself placed perhaps in the front row center of the balcony, or perhaps the mezanine of a concert decades past, not unlike what I had heard long ago in days of yore. I could envision where everyone was onstage: Jerry was at his finest with sometimes piercing cometlike notes blazing across the cosmos and around the theater and echoing through my head. Playing bass was as Lesh played it back then, not as some recordings have made it to be almost a caricature of Lesh's early style. Energy of the drumkits, impeccable! It was as if I was getting the soundboard feed of the concert, short of the echoing imperfections of the concert hall. I could go on, and would, if you had not had to trudge thru this long tome already, just to get to the end. I will tell you that out of the literally thousands of times I have listened to this album, be it on vinyl, tape or time-honored braincells, this was one of the most exciting listens I have had of it.
Many things I learned while playing around with Wayne's Amp 3, including not only about the amp, but the rest of my gear, my listening habits, and my personal goals for what I was listening for.
My next big project is to be going over the guts of my Altec 19s to remove doubt of how well they can sound. As I noted earlier, although sensitive enough to make sound with few watts, they can have a vorascious appetite, and specs say they can take ... hmmmm. I think I read 300 watts. I believe when I tried to play the Amp3 loud as I would like, that I literally sucked the life and power out of it. The fact that it played the Abby's for almost 3 hours before we quit is relevant in that it wasn't out of 'gas' yet, I just had to get home! Yet, at my volumes, I could drain it in less than an hour on the Altecs.
Ulitmately, and sadly, I would say that the Amp3 could not work for me in my current configuration. If I weren't so damned committed to the Altecs, knowing I could never replace them again, single driver high efficiency would be my pick to pair it with, and given how I heard it on the Abby's, I think I could live with this amp for a long time and find another part of my sound-chain to futz with.
My many, many thanks go to Wayne for thinking of me, putting up with me, and letting me listen to this amp( along with some M-80 and Nitro speaker cables, and Nitro interconnects). I used the cables as a constant in all of this, knowing that others heard the amp thru the same kind of wires. Alas, due to 6 and seven day weeks, and some incredibly time-consuming family issues, I've never gotten around to direct comparison of those to cables I have had around the house.
Compared to any other digital amp I have plugged into my system (including a short, several hour audition of a ClariT), I must say that the best of complements of any of these righteously also belong to this Amp 3 I had the good fortune to audition. I spent a lot of time with this amp trying to 'dig it' and mine the gold I finally was able to perceive.
Thanks for tuning in and reading all the way here. For me, it was worth it. And for you, I hope so too.
Regards,
DeadFish
PS. With apologies to everyone whose words or concepts I may have inadvertantly or with forethought 'ripped.'
