Former carver owner now PL

The Powerful Difference said:
Sir, are these like your Infinity's? I've always wanted to hear the Walsh tweeter...never seen a set of these in person. FWIW my speakers are very close in age to yours, possibly the very next generation after yours?

You said that you were a fellow Infinity enthusiast. Neat.
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Beautiful speakers!
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Sir, are these like your Infinity's? I've always wanted to hear the Walsh tweeter...never seen a set of these in person. FWIW my speakers are very close in age to yours, possibly the very next generation after yours?

You said that you were a fellow Infinity enthusiast. Neat.
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Picture on the left looks exactly like my ESS Rock Monitors. Would love to compare the two. I’ve always wondered how the great Heil compares to the Walsh.
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Sir, are these like your Infinity's? I've always wanted to hear the Walsh tweeter...never seen a set of these in person. FWIW my speakers are very close in age to yours, possibly the very next generation after yours?

You said that you were a fellow Infinity enthusiast. Neat.
Click to expand...
Those are the ones. They love the power. They are very sweet sounding.
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Oh my word! I'm not worthy! I have just seen my excaliber!

Seriously, the last time I felt like this was when I watched Shirley Muldowney do a Top Fuel Exhibition run at the Epping, NH dragstrip back in the late '90s.

It was billed as the "Top Fuel under the stars." Of course, I was standing right down by the starting line in order to get the full effect. (& I was running double hearing protection: earplugs + muffs) When she hit it, the flames were taller than I was, and the sound was so loud that it literally blurred my vision.

And in the time it takes to sneeze it was over. Her speed in the traps? A cool 304 mph. (By contrast, at the time my personal best at Epping was trying to break the ton with a near-stock (175+ hp) '84 Mustang GT back in the day. I got it up to 99.6 mph in the traps. Exactly 99.6 mph...3 separate times! Denied! :0)

And the best memory of that evening? If you were willing to stand in line, she would sign that evening's program - no charge! Naturally, I was towards the end of the line, and it was getting a bit late. Even so, Shirley came across as the nicest grandmother/neighbor where you would cut her yard for free in exchange for a slice of her homemade apple pie. It seems that the people who *really* get it done are so decent & naturally humble in person. Not only was I humbled, but since she showed me how to properly play the game in your 'retirement' years she instantly became my new patron saint of how to properly approach aging. (!)

****

...But I digress. That is one two amazing stack(s) of amplifiers. At the Pink Floyd Animals Tour concert I described in my introduction, I seem to remember the stacks of PL amps that they toured with were plain faced, & didn't have meters on the front?

So the effect was massive...but not beautiful like this.

****

So why did I write all this after seeing your photo for the 1st time? Because we had this saying that we (learned to) live by:

" No matter how fast you are...there is always someone faster. "

Well played, sir. You are setting the standard.

That rack is the epitome of "The Powerful Difference".

- Nice. -
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THANKS! But again, my wife disagrees. :cool:
 
“Better” is too vague.

“as if the musicians are in the room with us” is the goal I strive for.

I think I’m close, but that 100-watt class-A balanced Krell project nags at me… I’m thinking 1000VA per transformer and cost estimate is around $3,000 to complete a pair.

It might just be easier to get a pair of these:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/re...MIxOK8iuPc9AIVY4JbCh3wOgOoEAAYAiAAEgKh2_D_BwE

Trouble is, that’ll be six grand…
 
J!m said:
“Better” is too vague.

“as if the musicians are in the room with us” is the goal I strive for.

I think I’m close, but that 100-watt class-A balanced Krell project nags at me… I’m thinking 1000VA per transformer and cost estimate is around $3,000 to complete a pair.

It might just be easier to get a pair of these:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/re...MIxOK8iuPc9AIVY4JbCh3wOgOoEAAYAiAAEgKh2_D_BwE

Trouble is, that’ll be six grand…
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Yeah, that's the goal Jim. That's why I bought those Ohm Model F's, the closest I had heard till I heard Craig's ML Summits, but i liked the F's better. The K's do their thing VERY WELL, but my room is a bit small to get the soundstage right...still love em to death though...
 
J!m said:
“Better” is too vague.

“as if the musicians are in the room with us” is the goal I strive for.

I think I’m close, but that 100-watt class-A balanced Krell project nags at me… I’m thinking 1000VA per transformer and cost estimate is around $3,000 to complete a pair.

It might just be easier to get a pair of these:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/re...MIxOK8iuPc9AIVY4JbCh3wOgOoEAAYAiAAEgKh2_D_BwE

Trouble is, that’ll be six grand…
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Nice reviews on that bugger...
 
Bud, LOVE your attitude. We document everything around here, good, bad and indifferent. I've had some fantastic failures, but a lot was learned by everyone..
Yeah, its gonna be fun..
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Oops -- maybe I should apologize. The above really isn't done these days, especially in the polite circles where audiophiles congregate.

I just got so excited about all this that I reverted to what we used to refer to as "Bench Racing". This was standard practice, especially in flyover country, back in the day. But, a lot of our best projects started with similar amounts of balderdash.,. 'cuz once you say it in public, it can't be unsaid...or unheard by your buddies/partners in crime.

In the future, I will do my best to keep all of this to the bare minimum! :0)

"If it ain't fun, why do it?"

Cheers --
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No, no, no...for God's sake dont dare change your approach!!
I have stated for years that I love "characters"..ya know, the ones that you can notice in a crowd that ain't like the rest, the ones that make life interesting..don't change man...there are far too few characters left in this world!!!
 
There’s a saying on the track:

If you’re not crashing, you’re not pushing hard enough.

I just crashed into cones, but they certainly felt my wrath.

And regarding amps: 1500 class -A watts is definitely the big dog. The rich kid who buys the fast production car.

Nelson and Dan have some fantastic designs. Nelson always strives for the simplest circuit that will perform the required task. Dan says damn everything and so what works and sounds best.

Connecting those thoughts: the KSA-50 is touted as the best sounding of the early Krell designs. The later KSA-100, with Doyle the output decices, loses the magic.

So 1500 watts (or horsepower- but I’m a touque guy myself) is attractive, but with 120 devices and an outboard control circuit dialing back the bias when not needed(?) sounds an awful lot like a class AB design in a fancy box. It should be dissipating what, 3500 watts of heat or so at idle?

My plan is much more easily done. Four mono boards from KSA-50’s will be used. Two per chassis. Each chassis will run at high voltage (upper tolerable range) fed by 1000VA transformers. The “left” board will be the “hot” balanced lead and the “right” board will be the “cold” balanced lead. Now we have the JSA-100B monoblock. You will have the 50 watt class-A sound with headroom.
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Here's a link to "The Carver Challenge".

Not now...but once I restore/upgrage WOPL my D500s, I really want to recreate Bob's 'null circuit', implement it with a clean, battery-powered state-of=the=art headphone amp (so that I can listen deeper into the null) ...and see what I can learn from listening to the differences between different topology amps, varying amounts of feedback, etc.

I certainly won't learn everything I want to before check-out, but I look forward to cramming just as much as I can into my newfound abiilty to spend my quality time in my personal laboratory...instead of taking my place in traffic during rush hour.

Enjoy --
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I just finished building a headphone amp and it would fit your requirements. I’m running out of my old Aragon 47k preamp fed by the Planar 3.

Anyway, you can pick the mix apart- focus on one instrument in the mix and no matter how congested it gets, you can hear the leading and trailing edge of that instrument. It’s pretty amazing.

Designed by Wyn Palmer, who also designed the phono preamp I’m debugging now. He’s a retired PhD that designed op amps in his prior life. Needless to say, he has an understanding of op amps few others can match.

(he also uses a pair of those Benchmark amps and based on their performance he has no intention to design a power amplifier)
 
The quandary is financing.

I can finance my JSA project by selling my Counterpoint amps. But I really like them, and I’d like to have the reference on hand…
 
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