Last weekend, Mike Garner (TweekGeek or TG ) invited Mike Galusha (mgalusha) over to his place for a small listening session. He has been a dealer for Mark & Daniels speakers for awhile. He has demo'ed them for others in the DAM a few times in the past.
They are a fairly small speaker with a BIG sound and a great deal of low end from a small box. There has been a few drawbacks to the speakers. The parts in the crossover are not the best. The speaker also has a few peaks in it's frequency response that can make it a bit irritating to listen to for extended periods. They also have a low impedance dip that requires an amp with a fair amount of current to drive them.
He has been working with Danny Ritchie to come up with some mods for the crossover to upgrade the parts and remove the peak. The listening session would be to unveil the new crossover install in a pair of the $4800.00 Aragorn bookshelf speakers.
TG has also been looking for some amps that would work with these speakers. He brought in a couple of new brands. One, Jaton, is a module based amp. It can be ordered with anywhere from one to 5 modules installed. The modules contain the amplifier circuitry. The very large power supply is housed in the chassis. The amp modules are based around the LM3886 ICs. Each channel of the amp will put out 70 watts into 8 ohms and 140 watts into 4 ohm. The doubling down of the power is indicative of a really good power supply. A stereo version of this amp retails for $1,000.00.
The other amp he had to listen to was the Luminance KST-150. This amp is rated at 150 WPC at 8 ohms and retails for $3,000.00.
He also has a prototype of a new power cable form Jack Bybee. This contains two of the new "Golden Goddess Super Effect" Bybee Purifiers built into the cable along with a "standard" Bybee Purifier. This cables retail price has not been set, but is expected to be around $3000.00
The system was first set up with his personal modded Transporter feeding Mike Galusha's DIY "pre-amp" made with a remote controlled relay ladder attenuator before a Burson Buffer all mounted in one case
This was feeding the Jaton amp into the Aragorn. TG had some well know aftermarket power cables plugged into the amp. preamp and source. We used the song "Love For Sale" by Yves Evans. PeteG first introduced us to this track which has great female vocals with an absolute KILLER bass and drum section.
The sound of the system at first was very disjointed and boomy. The low end was muffled and completely out of pace with the high end. I was not impressed and expressed my displeasure with the sound. TG said wait a second. He turned the amp off and replaced the power cable to the amp with the Bybee cord. He turned the system on and the the sound was COMPLETELY different. The boominess and muffled sound of the low end was gone. The vocals were integrated. This was a MAJOR change. This was on order of putting in a new set of speakers. I have never heard a single power cable swap make such a huge difference.
Some time ago I had built some prototype AC cables based on my NITRO power cables. In these I installed some "standard" Bybee Purifiers. I have sent these around for demos and most people have liked them but didn't want to pay the roughly $1500.00 that these cable would cost. I have kept these cable around for my own use. I brought them over to TG's place just for grins. After we heard such a difference with the Bybee cable on the amp, we installed my power cables with Bybees on the pre-amp and source. The sound improved quite a bit, but not as much as the first cable swap.
We listened to the Aragorns for a bit. The sound out of these speakers was very nice. No hint of the 7kHz peak the the stock M&D spekaes have. It is smooth and very detailed. GREAT bass from such a small driver. There are some really low, sub 20 Hz parts in the Love For Sale track. These speakers with the modded crossover will reveal those parts.
The Jaton amp worked very nice with the speakers, but at higher volumes you could tell it was running out of steam. There was a hint of compression. For $1,000.00 I think the Jaton is a super deal. I think this amp could find a home in a lot of HT system for three channel duty. It could also be use with four channel for bi-amping a pair of speakers.
We then tried out the Luminance. The literature suggested the amp will take 15 mins to half an hour to sound it's best after being turned off. We put on some Brian Bromberg to play for a bit and took a break for some snacks. The Luminance sound nice at first, but you could tell the sound was changing minute by minute. After about half an hour, the sound had bloomed to one of richness and fullness. The Jaton is a nice sounding amp. Compared to the warmed up Luminance, the Jaton was a bit clinical. The Luminance had a full bodied sound that did not seem to have any trouble driving the M&D speakers. It played loud with no sense of compression. This is one Great amplifier.
We then changed out the pre-amp. I had brought over the recently updated BOLDER/Bent/Burson Buffer (B4) to see how it sounded in TG'S system. It had just come back from a demo at woodsyi's. In comparison to some tube preamps, the folks in DC didn't care for the sound of the B4. It was then loaned to a customer of mine in DC to try in his system. He called me up saying that one channel was out. I asked him to just pack it up and send it back. when I received it, one channel was indeed out and the power supply was not at all happy with the negative voltage reading very low. I installed another module in the bad channel and the voltage came right back up and everything was working correctly. I do not know when the module went bad and if this had something t do with why the B4 didn't sound good to woodsyi and his guests.
In TG's system the B4 sounded GREAT. It had more dynamics then the DIY preamp. The sound was more detailed. The leading edge of transients was more apparent. This is mostly due to the resistors used in the attenuator. This unit has the Nude Vishay's which are known to be very "crisp". I can see in some systems that are already balanced for the "flavor" of a tube pre-amp that this sound could be considered bright. In TG's system it jsut came through with more detail and a REALLY good bass line and dynamic attack.
The final change was a prototype of a Buffer that I have been working on. I really do like the Burson circuit, which is based on the Marantz HDAM circuit. I have been working with a company in China which offers some different circuits that do the same thing. I have a prototype unit that lets me compare the different circuits. I believe I have found a design that I like better than the Burson circuit. I installed the Buffer in TG's system and both he and mgalusha seemed to really like it. We played the same track and the low end extended deeper with more detail and fullness. I was able to hear more subtleties in the singer's voice. It was NOT bright or edgy. Unfortunately, when I went to change the circuit I managed to break a pin on a connector and thus ended the listening to this unit. I was able to later get it working back on the bench, but no more for that session.
I was very impressed with the sound of the modded Mark & Daniels Aragorns. So much, in fact, that I am going to be working with TweekGeek with these speakers. I will be doing the mods to the stock speakers. The mods are only going to be offered by TweekGeek. The speakers will come in and I will change out the parts and install my Nitro speaker wire along with Sonicaps and the notch filter.
TweekGeek was also very impressed with the new Buffer and the quality of workmanship this company showed. We will probably be working together to bring some custom products from this company to market. I hope to have a prototype Buffer/preamp/ headphone amp at RMAF to demo.
The "New" prototype Buffer will be used in my demo system at RMAF. John Chapman is working on a new preamp project that may be ready for debut at around the same time. If it makes it down here, it will also be available for audition.
I am not sure of pricing on the "New" buffer product. I am still working with the engineer in China on the design and layout of this item. For now, the BOLDER/Burson Buffer project is not going on. The costs were mounting up and this new product actually does sound better.
I AM offering mods for the stock Burson Buffer. This is the best way to get the kind of sound that the unit can produce for the immediate future.
The Bybee Golden Goddess Super Effect power cables and speaker "bullets" will be used in the BOLDER cable suite at RMAF. The other power cables used will be the BOLDER cable version of the Bybee power cables.
On a side note, I finally received my VMPS 626Rs back from the factory. I sent them in last year to be updated to use the CDWG. There were some problems with the actual wave guides warping. I still have not received the wave guide, but the rest of the speakers are back. I had the cabinet lined with Black Hole 5 and the crossovers are mounted outboard. The crossovers are built with Sonicaps with Sonicap Platinum bypasses. All of the wire is BOLDER Cable.
Brian liked the sound of the Sonicap/BOLDER wire combo so much, the pair of VMPS V-60s he is building for use at RMAF will be made with Sonicaps. They should be shipped this week.
Please stop by room 1009 at RMAF to say hello and take a listen.
