[Nicholas Bedworth]

These lovely amps were the very ones reviewed in  http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/odyssey2/1.html For those not already aware of the amp, they're about 200/400/800+ W, smooth and refined sounding, no where nearly at their limits with even $7000 DACs driving them.
 
Asking price of (see ad  http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=92911.msg923834;topicseen#new, not sure if we're allowed to put prices in the general threads ) Just wanted to make sure that everyone here knows they're for sale before they're gone...
 
Can ship internationally, no problem.
 
The Technical Brain monoblocks are on the way, and my house can only hold so much gear. Feel free to PM or e-mail to nicholas.bedworth@digitaldirect.com. I'm in GMT -10
 
 

[ducky7566]

Nicholas hello ...
 can you give me the dimenssions blocks, please ...
 I try to Recapture the "virus Odyssey", in France ...
 
,a friend who was making great speakers,  by a pro - craftsman, belgium
 and with whom I went to a demonstration with my stratos mono extremes, might be interested ...
 thank you to you ...
 PS: width height depth

[Nicholas Bedworth]

Bonjour, Monsieur Le Canard...
 
The dimensions of the Kismet case are 19" wide, 7" high, 19" deep (48 x 18 x 48 cm). These two chassis are US models, 120 V.
 
Thanks for helping!
 
Nick

[ducky7566]

thank you, mister perrot !!!!!!!!!!!! 

 I had not thought about the fact that it is 120 volts ...

 good, I will post your ad to these fabulous Kismet !!!!!!!!!!
 to the next ...
 ducky.

[Nicholas Bedworth]

Moi, je suis le grand perruch d'avant l'homme. Je peut parler and utiliser les ordinateurs aussi. J'aime les choses musicales et electronique. Mais c'est difficile a taper avec mon bec.
 
A bien tot..

[BobC]

Nicholas,

I've read that JV has put the Tech Brain stuff on par with his reference Soulution.  And in his Khartago review he favorably compared them with the Soulutions as well.  Something like "close, but just a bit less than Soulution"...or a tase of Soulution...not sure but it was meant to be a compliment.

So with that logic the Odyssey Kismets should hold their own when compared with Technical Brain, right?

When you're able, I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on how your old reference (Kismet) compares with your new reference (Tech Brain).  ...not that I could ever afford them 

 

[Nicholas Bedworth]

What's really nice about the Technical Brains is that they're 65% the price of the Soulutions at "only" $70K.
 
Keeping in mind that the Kismets cost about what the sales tax would be for the Technical Brains, they're really quite good, but of course the TBs are way better.

[BobC]

I dont think anyone seriously expects the Kismets to compete with TB or Soulution.  But given they're both your reference, it will be nice to hear your thoughts as you step up.  Is it even close?  What do you get with the order of magnitude cost increase?  Do you feel it was worth it?  (I know, I know "worth" is a function of one's bank account...but in any case a TB investment is serious money which someone must plan around or save for a long time!)

[Nicholas Bedworth]

To me, the Kismet is a kind of "baseline" reference monoblock, meaning it does so many things very well indeed. See the review in 6moons.
 
The cost increase of the TB is a bit over 20X, for Kismets-in-Stratos cases. Using a Weiss DAC 202 in both cases, what one hears is that the Technical Brains have an authoritative "grip" in the bass which is really impressive. That's possibly the most apparent difference that "anyone" could hear.
 
Beyond that, the instruments and voices of performers seem to float in the field between and behind the speakers more convincingly than with the Kismets. The TBs are certainly smooth, and very low noise. The true balanced nature of the TB inputs is a big help. I've been running the Kismats with XLR cables, which isn't ideal as it seems to pick up some noise from the environment. But my cables are XLR and that's that, so to speak.
 
Is there much improvement to be had by going from $70K to $100K for the Soulutions? Well, probably that's unlikely.
 
The functional tiers seem to be the $5-10K monoblocks (think Odyssey, Rogue); then the $20-25K ones (Gamut) and then the $40-70K up (D'Agostino, TB, Soulution). I put the $42K D'Agostinon in the same category because they're domestically manufactured; stripping out the distributor overhead from the TB and Solution, and also  the labor/parts cost differential, suggests that if they were also made in the US, they'd be roughly the same price.
 
So we end up with $5-10K, $20K, and $50K normalized cost products. And these correspond to very good, really good, and excellent in my mind.

[BobC]

Thank you, Nicholas.     Good luck with your sale.

[mowdou]

hi
do you still have them?
thanks

[HiroPro]

I seriously can't believe people shell out that kinda coin for electronics and they appear to have more money than brains and are surely GULLIBLE or simply have no respect for money. Or perhaps it's something else financially unbeknown to us little fishes...

Hey Nicholas Bedworth have you ever read The Audio Critic? owhh wait you write for the antithesis Six Moons...

Do you seriously think any of those amplifiers in terms of electronics are worth more than... $5000 !?!

This is his background.

Nicholas Bedworth: Representative professional research and development activities
1. High-resolution 4096 x 4096 x 24-bit analogue/digital conversion of high-energy particle-scattering imagery with three-dimension reconstruction; measurement of vertices and calculation of particle momentum with computer-graphic visualization. - Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY; and Yale University, New Haven, CT.
2. Electrophysiological investigation of sensory neurons and cybernetic modeling of transfer functions; software-driven signal analysis - Sonderforschungsbereich für Kybernetik and Max Planck Gesellschaft, München, BRD.
3. Multichannel electroencephalographic analysis with real-time Fast Fourier Transform - University of California, Los Angeles, CA.
4. High-speed image acquisition subsystems for computed axial-tomographic devices for industrial and medical application including multi-ported memory; narrow-aperture sample-and-hold amplification with low-jitter analog/digital sample conversion. - American Science and Engineering, Cambridge, MA.
5. Low-latency 100 nanosecond microprocessor writable control store and firmware - Quadex Technology, Cambridge, MA.
6. Ultra-low dosage X-ray digital radiography scanner systems -American Science and Engineering.
7. Narrow-band spectroscopic analysis of hyper-sonic combustion flow fields using nanosecond-scale pulsed dye laser illumination and image intensification -University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, IL; Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA; Volvo, Goteborg, Sweden; University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.
8. Real-time Fast Fourier Transform image processing software for phase-contrast microscopy -Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, and University of California, Los Angeles, CA.
9. Standing acoustic-wave optical signal processing apparatus, 10MHz sampling rate, 24+bit quantization -. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.
10. High-phase resolution image scanning and networked distribution technology -Bell and Howell Corporation, Wooster, OH.

I don't get it...

How can you be THAT SMART yet be willing to pay $70,000 for amplifiers !?!

I DON'T GET IT

There most be some other reason to sink money into such expensive stuff...

And they all seem to sell the stuff off within a short period...

Fancy financial book keeping mechanism and evasion device?

I've read consiracy that Hollywood is the biggest laundering operation on earth... think about it... how the heck could anyone audit a film production!?! Plus the Hollywood people would just dazzle the auditors into submission... and do you really think some of the productions cost THAT MUCH!

hmm...

One can only WONDER with AWE

PS Imagine an audit that involves $70,000 amplifiers... no one in their right mind would think it's worth that kinda money... outside of this small community...

[JLM]

Niche of a niche.  I've got about $5,000 USD currently invested in my main rig with most bought used/B-stock (the others are largely from older systems that would be hard to sell).  My guess is that's close to average in these parts.

What's a sane amount to spend on audio when the average person on the planet lives on $2/day?  Probably pretty close to zero.

I stopped wondering about other people's values (as long as they're not hurting others) a long time ago. 

[JohnR]

I think the handwringing here is all moot:

The amps were sold very quickly on Audiogon... but check with Klaus... he can make you a brand-new set with all the latest mods for a good price.

If only this circle had a Facilitator...