Single ended - by accident?

[JerryT]

Hi

I watched an ebay auction and bid for a Goldbaile 2A3 SET amplifier. How silly! Unexpectedly I won. A week later the amplifer arrived home.

After a couple of days I put it into the main system in the place of the much modified KAT 6550 (currently running Svet 88s, Mullard E80CFs and NOS 5u4GBs with a sprinkling of boutique capacitors) which does an excellent job of controlling my much modified 15 year old Wharfedale Harewoods (when Audiolab, Naim and MF failed). No great expectations - give it a try and decide SET isn't for me- you may recognise the thought process!

So how does 3.5 watts of SE, with no damping factor to conside, sound so musical? How come I can remove the foam from the reflex ports and still smile??

Wwwwwwwwho knows - just thought I'd share - can't say much more because I've got a few hundred CDs and LPs to try - I'll be back when I've worn the music out or worked out the attraction. Until then.....


Jerry

[NickG]

Who knows, maybe you are going mad like a few more of us :-)

[andrew ivimey]

Insanity is relative - though best not kept in the family ....

The answer Jerry is that you are too easily fooled and cloth eared to boot. We all know that push pull amps are better than SE.

You will get tired of this goldbolloxs thing, become tired and listless,fidgety and weak and the only solution then is to send me the SE amp so you can sleep peacefully at night in the safe and certain knowledge that global warming does not exist and that the world is banana shaped.

[Paul Barker]

It would be the obvious thing for us se fans to come on and welcome you with open arms blah blah, but I don't want to be polar about this.

Glad you are enjoying the benefits of se to the extent you don't mind the compromises. That is how I see my hobby.

I find so far you can't have everything, so you find something you enjoy and woul;dn't like to be without at any cost. There is some stuff in se sometimes that gives me a small taste of what I am aiming for. You know stuff like very low distortion low level information about the environment the music was played in, realistic portrayal of the singer even in mono that makes you believe they are perched three dimensionally in front of the speaker. I have only heard this two or three times.

[Greg.]

Hmmm, Paul, you need to listen to more push-pull. I always expect to hear the singers voice as you describe. If I don't, I blame the recording

Best wishes,

Greg

[Darren D]

Have to agree with Greg here, Although I listen to SE myself, not a great fan of PP for various reasons. A personal pref.

My singers normally present themselves in a central possition a little forward of the soundstage.

Len and I had a long afternoon with my current set-up on Monday.
Apart from the Decca Kellys being changed for Londons since his last vist, I had introduced a Beringer Active crossover to controll the sub 40HZ to a Fane 15" unit.

Len wasn't convinced that the active crossover wasn't introducing some amount of solid stateness to the scene even though the attractive additon of sub bass was blinding obvious.

So we experimented to some degree with and without the Beringer in the signal path.
Conclusion: we couldn't detect even the slightes difference with or without the active crossover in the PX4's signal path. The only thing we could find was that the PX4 could be turned up quite a bit to higher output levels before distortion was evident. This we concluded was that by removing the very lower bass from the PX4 was lifting the threshold of bass saturation in the valve amps output transformers or some other part of the curcuit.
I supose I should set up the osciloscope and measure exactly what's the story here, but my time is limited with pre-mentioned activities.

But the biggest factor of my current set-up is good quality sub bass give thunderous bass more akin to what you would experiance in the cimemas. ie room filling. Not just the bass but the whole picture.
The actual volume of the bass when listened on it's own is supprisingly very low indeed. You'd think it was a pointless effort, but you'd be so wrong.

Be great with say a TV surround system, but I watch almost no TV. Have to try it sometime.

What was my original point. Oh yes, central lifelike imaging of the vocalist.

Darren

[Paul Barker]

I'm talking mono here.

Darren the Berhinger adds gain and low drive impedance that's the main reason the px4 goes lowder cleaner the behringer is able to drive your mh41 better than the phono stage can.

I too have a Behringer it has quite a bit of gain.

Nice to know you don't detect any problems with it. I thought I imagined some but perhaps not. Peter commented to me that the crossover couldn't be good when he heard it because he said he heard three Mary Hopkins's. Well yesterday without Behringer with single driver (Lowt6her with whizzer cut off) in mono, there are still three Mary Hopkins's. It's the recording.

Just shows how easy it is to jump to conclusions.

[Darren D]

Hi Paul,

Not being finicky, the Beringer indeed is able to add gain. This is adjustable on both the input and output which has been set to add nothing in that department.

The low drive impedance is a very valid point.

I must say though that when I first tried this unit I was very disapointed, the music was quite sterile. I almost binned it there and then, the ebay bin that is.
But over time it most deff has settled down. I've never been a great believer of "burning in" but then I've seldom bought brand new items apart from individual components.

I can honestly say that in my own system being without it would be a great loss. Mark has theatened to bring his "critical ear" around sometime soon..always good to get other peoples opinion, so far it's just Len and myself.

Darren

[Greg.]

Hi Paul,

Yep, I can do 3D in mono......even one speaker if you like

Best wishes,

Greg

[steve s]

Originally Posted by Greg.

Hi Paul,

Yep, I can do 3D in mono......even one speaker if you like

Best wishes,

Greg

i think you will have to bring your complete system to eggborough greg and prove to us all how good p/p can be.....


cheers steve