[Merle]

I've been looking for a new stereo for the last couple of weeks and frankly, nothing is really knocking me out. I've set aside a budget of around 3 to 5K for the new system. My question, would it make sense to dump the load on a great pair of speakers [say something like the Totem Forest] and hook it up to the Panny digital receiver? Sounds kind of wacky to me. I would hate to blow the wad on the speakers only to find out the Panny doesn't do it, leaving me with nothing left over for an amp. I have a nice Arcam cd player and a great vintage tuner. Should I keep looking to split my budget between the amp and speakers or shoot the moon on the speakers and hope for the best with the Panny? Anyone around Baltimore using the Panny with really good speakers I could hear? Kind of hard to figure out what it sounds like in CC.

[Mathew_M]

The Panny takes a long time to break in.  It is also extremely revealing.  
Checky Audio Asylum, there are a few over there driving some high priced speakers with the Panny and selling off their other components.

[Prima Negev]

I have recently purchased the "panny" and prior to that I was running a pair of VMPS RM 40's with an atmasphere s30 through zero autoformers. The S30 was the most revealing amp I have found to date..with these speakers. Prior to that I used a Coda solid state amp.

My atmasphere amp in now sitting in the spare room.

The panny took a bit of getting used to, once I set it up correctly, the dynamics were better than the atmasphere and believe it or not, the spatial clues were all there as well as the clarity. Less bloom though, but was that an anomaly of the tubes anyway?

My search for great sound has taken my from a dyna MKIII with magneplaners 1.6, to Martin Logan electrostats with the Coda ss amp, and now to the system as I have. The only caveat is that the "panny" (sa-xr45) is somewhat better with a digital feed. Now I have tried this great little amp with  an ART DIO digital out with analog in to the DIO with mixed results. The DIO cleaned up the sound, but introduced hiss and oscillations into the "panny". Wayne at Boulder Cables is checking the compatibility issues out for me...thanks Wayne!. Oh by the way...the "panny" seems to sound great via turntable feeding the analog inputs through my audio research PH-1 phono pre.

[ABEX]

If you want to match something to th Panny Unit I would get one ,break it in using a few cheap speakers and then take it with me to audition any speakre you come accross. Remember you are the customer and they will or should want to satisfy you!

Throw it at a dealer and say I have $2-$3K and I want to find a speaker to match up good to this.

The thing only weighs 9lbs. And only cost $200-$300 and if you cannot find anything you can recoup your $$ by selling it off.

[Tyson]

I'm running a stock panny 45 with my VMPS RM40's.  Last night I realized why I ilke it so much, even stock (besides the transparency and the dynamics).  That is the imaging and spatial presentation is as good as anything I've heard in my system.  I listen to large orchestral music quite a bit, and instrument placement very, very important.  And the Panny just nails this aspect.  And it even gets harmonics down very well.

The place that the stock panny falls down is in the "warmth" region, it is a little thin in the lower mids compared to my reference AVA gear (tube hybrid amp and preamp).  This makes the Panny sound a bit thin and not as lifelike as the AVA gear.  

The good news (for me, anyway), is that the Bolder Cables modded Panny that I heard 2 weeks ago did NOT have this issue.  It was even better spatially and had a nice weight to the sound.

In fact the Panny was so good, I've been having a hard time actually believing that it was as good as my ears were telling me it was.  Which is the only reason I haven't put up for sale every piece of high end gear I own.  I'll get another chance to listen to the modded Panny this weekend, and if you see a bunch of "for sale" ads, you'll know that my first impressions were confirmed.

[ABEX]

...the "panny" seems to sound great via turntable feeding the analog inputs through my audio research PH-1 phono pre."

So there is hope in using the Panny with a TT setup, Thx!

[randog]

Tyson, please report your findings. We are all very eager to hear about it.

I'm coming in real late on this Panny stuff and am trying to catch up since I'm still looking for solutions for my 2-channel/ht rig which I'm hoping to have up and running in a few weeks. I am currently auditioning 2-channel preamps as I've been cautioned about an all-in-one system for 2-channel sonics... at least until now.  

I have some questions regarding your setup, Tyson. When you auditioned Wayne's modded unit, you were convinced the 2-channel goodness was due largely to the bybees in your IC's. Are you using those IC's with your unmodded unit now? If so, can you compare your impressions of the stock panny w/o bybees, the stock panny w/bybees, and the modded panny both ways as well? Extra credit is trying it with the bybee on the digital cable but not the speaker cables and vice-versa.

Also, I would like to hear your impressions of the stock vs. modded panny, what you understand to be the mods by Wayne, and whether they are worth paying an additional 250% over the cost of the stock unit. Finally, I would like to hear whether you feel the bybees make the biggest single enhancement of all. In other words, percentage-wise, how close would a stock panny w/bybees be to a modded panny w/bybees?

OK, that last one wasn't really the 'finally'   This one is: If you had a scale from 1-100 and a stock panny w/o bybees sat at 75, how would you score the other options? I know this is specific to your system and limited time with this, but I think a lot of us trust your judgement and would be very interested if nothing else to hear your impressions put to a scale if it's possible for you to do so. It makes it much easier to understand where the point of diminishing returns begins WRT costs and mods.

If Wayne or anyone else with experiences with the Panny want to chime in as well, please let 'er rip! I've already asked Wayne about this privately, but I'm also interested in the emphasis on the transport and whether it's role is dimished since data is transferred digitally rather than analog.

Randog

PS: I made the jump and ordered the Panny myself since I wanted to replace my Outlaw with something that has PLII, anyway. If it gets here soon I can listen to it against my preamp auditions.  

[azryan]

Well I've had the XR25 for months now (which I guess doesn't have the same power supply as the 45 so I got one of those on the way too).

I use GR Research Alphas and have also tried the Pannie on my Newform Research 630's and 645's (John M. of Newform was the one who 'discovered' this Pannie).

Just stock the XR25 was really amazingly good in detail, dynamics, and bass depth/slam and tight control.

What I was using was the Outlaw 950 pre/pro and eARTwo digital amp.

I knew the Outlaw wasn't close to good enough for the eARTwo and was looking at other preamps and DACs, but I was happy enough with the sound.

The Pannie on it's own was a dry, less liquid real version of that 950/eAR combo. I used it as surround amps where it worked fine.

I tried the Sony 2000ES Rec. for a full month and initially I was sure that it was a bit better than the Pannie, but eventually I came to realize that it was messed up on the highs and stabbing my ears. I listened to less and less music or time.

I put the Pannie back in and there's none of that top end damage. The Sony also had WAY too low gain, and a way too high noise floor (compared to ZERO noise floor on the Pannie). Even though the Sony LOOKED nicer on the face, the back was just as cheapo as the Pannie.

Now that Wayne is modding the XR45 and bypassing the cheap ass speaker outs and changing a lot on the internals plus Tyson's and other's comments actually hearing the unit are enough to convince me that in modded form it'll be everything I want.

It's a WAAAAAY higher price total for the modded Pannie, but I think sound quality it needs modding, but stock quality... it's WORTH modding.

~$1,000 total for your HT AND outstanding 2-chan. set-up? That makes that high mod price look pretty damn cheap to me.

It's 100% noise free at any volume level, and esp. for the GR Alphas just using the main channel 100W amps... it's plenty of power, but then most typical ~89-91-ishdb point source speakers would need 5-10 times the power to hit the same SPL's.

Looks like the stereo bi-amp 'Party' mode on the Pannie works great and will then put you at 200W each which is about as much as most people really need for music anyway I think.

[randog]

Hey AZ, thanks for the great reply. I should have started another thread as my post/reply to Tyson was chock full of worms.  

My apologies to Merle... not sure what to do now. I guess I'll continue. Wish there was a clean way to break threads apart.  

Believe me, I have nothing but positive things to say about Wayne... hell, I just dropped more coin with him in cables than I'd ever thought I'd spend!   I have no doubt that his mods are worth every penny...

Having said that, a $300 machine is what's considered "throw-away" electronics these days. What that means is the manufacturer has an expected product life and designs his product accordingly. I would guess the expected product life of this product as set forth by Panasonic to be around 3 years. Luckily, there are no moving parts which make the risk of a short life - less, but there's still that cloud hanging overhead.

Investing $1000 for this unit still sounds like a bargain for the resulting sonics, but it's still designed for a $300 retail price point by the mfgr. $1000 is a higher tier in my way of thinking and something that I'll want to hang onto for awhile (i.e. not throw away - the cheap bastard that I am). That's why I'm curious about a tier breakdown between those 2 price points and how much you can gain incrementally. If 25% of the cost gets you 75% of the way there... that's pretty damn cool, eh?

At least if the Panny (you are allowed to refer to anything under $300 as a...) player   breaks down in a couple of years, hopefully you could strip the good stuff Wayne added and transfer it to another unit (or better yet have him do it if he isn't too rich and famous by then).  

Randog

[Mathew_M]

More importantly with consumer electronics, will Panasonic release an XR75 next year that has improved technology.  Sure they will still use the same cheap components to get the price at consumer level but what if the sonic improvement is so much better that it renders even a modded XR45 obsolete?  We're in new territory with the XR45 and I'm assuming that it will only get better.  Question is do we as audiophiles just keep spending $300 a year buying the latest and greatest or spend the $1000 now and be content for the next 3 years.

[vpolineni]

mathew,
   i think the sa-xr70 has the same amp section as the sa-xr45.. with better video performance (hdmi input).

[Rob Babcock]

Right, Mathew!   What audiophool have you ever met that was happy with anything for 3 years?   Many of us have to spin the gear-go-round every 3 months!

[randog]

Heh. Combining all our posts then, that's only $4K a year or $12K spent in 3 years for constant upgrades of modded pannies... doesn't sound like much of a bargain anymore, does it?  

[JLM]

Mathew:  Most here seem to be spending $3,000 a year already, $300 would be a improvement.  

It IS hard to spend so much percentage wise to mod a component.  Here's a couple of thoughts:

1.) Save money on buying a DAC (helps offset the cost of mods);

2.) Go with Bybee digital cables;

3.) If not totally pleased, use it in a HT system;

4.) Just use it stock (it's still very good).

A good write up of Tyson's get together last weekend is somewhere around here.

[Eric]

I can't help but wonder if this is just another in the long line of "the best" that have made the rounds here

[zybar]

Eric,

I haven't heard the Panny yet, but one of my best friends was at the listening session at Tyson's house.  He has been checking out my tube based systems for years and he knows good sound when he hears it.  If he is telling me that the Panny is good, I believe him.

Just because it is good, won't make it right for everybody.  

My big fear is that it won't work for me because it will lose the soul and emotional involvment factor that good tube amps provide.  There is a reason I put up with tube mono blocs that are expensive, hot, and big!  

My suggestion is, do whatever you can to try and get an audition and judge for yourself.  

We all hear things differently, have different tastes, and very different rooms.  I have heard the same speakers in multiple setups that sounded absolutely nothing alike (from god aweful to wow! that is nice).  If somebody just heard it in the aweful system, they would have probably thought the speakers stunk - which wasn't the case).

Sorry to rant and rave...

GW

[Eric]

As I have been reading the posts regarding the Panny, I was thinking that there are two ongoing phenomena in audio.

1. The idea that a component must be super expensive to be good. Typically one sees a new expensive peace of gear come out and get a super review in a magazine. Folks then rush to buy it (usually on a card) and extoll its virtues on the various sites.

2. The idea that you can get top of the line for nothing. This happens most frequently here and what was HD. A manufacturer issues a product that is a good bang for the buck. People jump in to buy and begin to hit the sites with reviews that claim its better than gear costing thousands more.

The funny thing about both of the above is that usually within the year you see alot of the units on AG with the peoploe moving on to the next flavor.

My conclusions:

1. If something seems to be too good to be true it usually is
2. Just because something sounds different than what you have, it doesn't mean its better.
3. We are all more gear heads than we would like to admit. Its as much about the gear as it is the music
4. If you have something you like, don't let anyone tell you you should like something else better. Liste for your self
5. Marketers know what they are doing

I highly recommend the latest issue of Bound for Sound., Marty discusses the current state of Audio reviews and discussion (including sites like this) on audio purchasing etc. It is a great read

[Eric]

Zybar,

I agree listen before buying

[zybar]

Eric,

Very well said.

One of the more recent examples of this was the HDXV digital ic.  It was hailed here as the "best" digital cable out there period.  Not just good for the money.

So I gave it a shot...

Was it good?  Yes.

Was it better in my system than my current reference (Argent Audio Jaden Signature at $450 list)?  No.

Now that the smoke has cleared, I am seeing more posts that the HDXV didn't surpass somebody's reference ic.  

None of this makes it a bad product, but it just reinforces that idea that you need to hear things for yourself and learn how to read between the lines (for both profiessional and board type reviews).

GW

[brj]

First, let me state that I agree with the "listening before buying" approach.  The hard part is the shear mass of options available for each component or widget under consideration!  And then you have "synergy" to deal with.    The reviews do help a person sort through some of the clutter...

zybar, your example is well founded, but is also dependent on a person's goals.  Many people (myself included) are trying to find the highest performing component within a certain price range.  That $480 cable costs more than the Panny mentioned previously!  $300 ($399 list, I think) gets you amps, pre-amp, tuner, etc with money left over for a better power cord and some vibration damping!

Of course, if reviewers (professional or otherwise) claim "best - cost no object," then there is definitely something to discuss.  On forums like these, however, I tend to see more "amazing for the cost" or "better than anything experienced up to X dollars" type posts.  These seem more reasonable - especially if a person is thorough enough to list what else they have experienced.

Then again, maybe I just haven't heard the right stuff yet!

-Brian