Hi,
I am not sure what Amp you heard with which speakers. What I will say is that if the match is wrong the results are quite bad.
The Ongaku needs a real 92dB/W/m or so efficiency and even that will only suffice in the frontroom of an english terraced victorian house or a japanese 6 Tatami living room.
I used Cary's in a studio install, they are ok. The Audio Note Japan (that is Kondo) gear has something the Audio Note UK stuff lacks and which I personally connect with.
But as they said, de gustibus non disputandum est.
Indeed.
And it would behove the mainstream audio community well to learn how and why (I'm catching glimpses, I phantsy, of that which hides 'yonder the veil)
Ciao T
I have heard the Audio Note amplifier, as a matter of a fact had to spend a couple hrs at lunch one day ( NYC 1996) listening to how great the 1st watt is and why the need for only 5 watts ....blah, blah, blah , ....
I am not sure what Amp you heard with which speakers. What I will say is that if the match is wrong the results are quite bad.
The Ongaku needs a real 92dB/W/m or so efficiency and even that will only suffice in the frontroom of an english terraced victorian house or a japanese 6 Tatami living room.
I used Cary's in a studio install, they are ok. The Audio Note Japan (that is Kondo) gear has something the Audio Note UK stuff lacks and which I personally connect with.
But as they said, de gustibus non disputandum est.
Frankly for an amplifier to have such high orders of distortion and still sound , not only "good" , but "great" , is vey telling ...
Indeed.
And it would behove the mainstream audio community well to learn how and why (I'm catching glimpses, I phantsy, of that which hides 'yonder the veil)
Ciao T
Hi,
The horns probably Avant Garde. I would say that 15 Years ago they had a more challenging sonic personality than now and even so, I know few people who can set up older Avant Garde Trio's to even sound decent never mind great (no, I can't either - i can get the Okm and even good, but I heard them much better than I can set them up)..
The Ongaku does not (IMHO) sound very good with them, the Baransu (300B - Single - all Silver - probably the least known Kondo amp) matches much better.
Best I heard an Ongaku is in a smallish room with Wilson Watt 3 / Puppy 2...
Ciao T
I heard the ongaku, playing 103db/w/m/ horns , setup by Mr Audio Note, japan, himself...!!!!Speakers i don't recall the model or brand, they where huge 3 ways .......Huge...
The horns probably Avant Garde. I would say that 15 Years ago they had a more challenging sonic personality than now and even so, I know few people who can set up older Avant Garde Trio's to even sound decent never mind great (no, I can't either - i can get the Okm and even good, but I heard them much better than I can set them up)..
The Ongaku does not (IMHO) sound very good with them, the Baransu (300B - Single - all Silver - probably the least known Kondo amp) matches much better.
Best I heard an Ongaku is in a smallish room with Wilson Watt 3 / Puppy 2...
Ciao T
As you mentioned Audio Note UK I have to mention them in connection with capacitors. When I did some prototypes for Donald North Audio he wished to use some paper and oil caps from AN. They were huge affairs and quite expensive, each of them more than the entire bill-of-materials cost for one of the then-day-client's powered speakers
Evidently, from what I could gather through DN's conversations with them, AN believes that the critical property of capacitors for audio is their piezoelectric activity, and suggests listening acoustically to a candidate cap when it's being driven with a signal, the desirable attribute being that you can't hear any acoustic emission. And in keeping with this, the paper-oil caps are silent.
But I found them to have a lot of leakage current, and I quipped to DN that they were the only coupling caps that seemed to require a d.c. servo
The device was an active crossover, a hybrid tube-sand thing, and I was still finding my way with hollow-state. The AN folks, reliably, sneered at it. About the only parts of it that don't look too bad to me now are some sand-state current-sourced high-gm triode cathode followers, which at least achieved decently low noise, once I got grid-stopper resistors adjusted to where the tubes wouldn't take off and scream at 80MHz and incinerate the grids. The desire to have everything in one chassis led to insuperable issues with mains frequency fields from the leadout wires of the toroid, intercepted by the rather large loop areas of the AN output coupling caps. So it goes.
Also, on caps: another heretical view comes from Rich May, who once told me that the winding-tensioning of the foil and dielectric was more important to capacitor sound than the dielectric material itself. Perhaps that explains some of the variations in caps made from otherwise-excellent materials like properly-cured Teflon, polystyrene...?
Brad
It's a point I've made on this forum repeatedly. Give me machine-made polypropylene- Teflon is too soft to get really high tension and polystyrene degrades with the slightest heat. Hand wound is a recipe for microphonics.
Hi,
These probably where Paper/Oil, AN has switched to using plastic film nowadays.
I could have told you that.
The electrode material also makes a big difference (say Alu vs. Tin vs. Copper vs. Silver) as does the stiffness of the dielectric.
Of course, as many are so fond to tell us, there are no differences between capacitors...
Ciao T
As you mentioned Audio Note UK I have to mention them in connection with capacitors. When I did some prototypes for Donald North Audio he wished to use some paper and oil caps from AN. They were huge affairs and quite expensive, each of them more than the entire bill-of-materials cost for one of the then-day-client's powered speakers
These probably where Paper/Oil, AN has switched to using plastic film nowadays.
I could have told you that.
The electrode material also makes a big difference (say Alu vs. Tin vs. Copper vs. Silver) as does the stiffness of the dielectric.
Of course, as many are so fond to tell us, there are no differences between capacitors...
Ciao T
you don't realize that "pandering to your base" with obviously flawed rhetoric is insulting to their intelligence as well?
diverse cap dielectrics, constructions were available before you ever touched a soldering iron - just maybe "conventional engineers" have understood the need for different performance tradeoffs in circuit components for a long human lifetime of electrical engineering now
Now about those graphs, meaningless...? .
No, but they had nothing to do with THD. One is a square wave, the other is a spectrum from an IMD measurement. Some might be happy with the sound of that amp. I would be embarrassed to sell something like that, but that's why I'm not one of them perr-fessionals.
Well they are considered purrr-fessionals and they like the sound, how ..? with such poor measurements , there should have been consensus on how poorly the amp sounds ...
My insinuation to THD was from reading the article not from the graphs posted ... 5% @ rated power ..... !!!!
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Apparently not. Your stuff has good frequency response, low distortion, low source impedance, and is stable. As Max Bialystock said to Leo Bloom, "Naaaah, too good!" Back to the drawing board!
On what we are not sure what to quantify, my wife did like the SE Cary triodes. Variac came today.
Back to study. Appreciate the diode feedback. I am having trouble visualizing the relationships between phase changes and the poles.
Tangent: Often wondered if a low pass filter in the tweeter crossover would be adventitious. Don't ask the tweeter to do things you don't want it to do anyway. Never seen commentary on that.
Back to study. Appreciate the diode feedback. I am having trouble visualizing the relationships between phase changes and the poles.
Tangent: Often wondered if a low pass filter in the tweeter crossover would be adventitious. Don't ask the tweeter to do things you don't want it to do anyway. Never seen commentary on that.
Suspect you mean "advantageous". Well, tweeters are usually themselves getting predominantly inductive at high-enough frequencies, so they have a bit of their own inherent lowpass filter. Not that this makes it all that difficult to burn them out.
Hi,
I was being ironic. You understand irony?
And I am not pandering to anyone.
You may be labouring under the misapprehension that I actually care what people think of my ideas, that I am looking for some kind of fan-club or any such.
I don't.
I'm merely trying to help those that ask for help and ideas, simply because when I was much younger and less experienced I found people that did the same for me.
Anyone else, take it or leave it.
You know what, when I was a little kid and started messing with tube radios and other circuits of mine I was amazed by the many different one and what could be the reasoning. I figured then it must be like chocolate or icecream, different flavours, tastes...
Ciao T
I was being ironic. You understand irony?
And I am not pandering to anyone.
You may be labouring under the misapprehension that I actually care what people think of my ideas, that I am looking for some kind of fan-club or any such.
I don't.
I'm merely trying to help those that ask for help and ideas, simply because when I was much younger and less experienced I found people that did the same for me.
Anyone else, take it or leave it.
You know what, when I was a little kid and started messing with tube radios and other circuits of mine I was amazed by the many different one and what could be the reasoning. I figured then it must be like chocolate or icecream, different flavours, tastes...
Ciao T
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