Firstly let me say thank you for all the well wishes. It is getting increasingly hard for me to find the levels of camaraderie and mutual respect elsewhere that are so abundant here.
OK, back to audio. I'm closing in on 30 hours, and feel like I'm through the worst of the breakin. After last nights run the bass has tightened up, the sound stage is bigger with better definition and the sound is both a little more transparent and liquid. I just got done listening to Gemini by Alan Parsons (get it?) and it was amazing. Huge 3D soundscape, razor sharp imaging and just the right amount of tube loveliness. I'm temped to say the best sound I've heard in my house but will hold off for a little while.
When I got my 300B amp I was surprised (and pleased) at how much it sounded like my UFOs. I've spent most of the last year working through my collection of 6SN7 equivalents trying to tweak the 300B sound to where I want it. And just a couple of weeks ago I achieved the best combination yet of 300B yumminess and UFO speed and transparency. But something still wasn't quite right.
Quote:Posted by: GroovySauce Posted on: Today at 04:49:36
...More detail doesn't mean that it isn't sexy and romantic. The UFO amps nail this like no other amp I've ever heard.
Exactly. I take some pride in my ability to express myself in writing but I'm struggling to find the words to explain what it is about the UFO25s that I like better than the 300B amp. I've said before the UFOs are the perfect balance of truth and beauty. The 300B trades some of the truth for a little more beauty and I want the truth back. And I feel like I have it now. A couple of posters have made photographic analogies to the sound so here's mine:
To me it isn't about the sharpness of image. The 300B was tack sharp, as are the '25s. It is like the 300B "image" was processed with just a little too much saturation and contrast. Nothing offensive, and at first look it can be striking. But on closer inspection something just doesn't seem right. The image looks good, but maybe
too good. It isn't that anything is missing necessarily, if anything there too much for my brain to be fully engaged in the experience.
A few technical notes:
I got two amps because I want to run balanced all the way to the speakers, not because of the extra watts. I was pretty sure I had never clipped my UFOs and have confirmed that I can play the 25s way louder than I would ever want to listen without the meters moving or the VR tubes flinching.
My front end is essentially unchanged from a year ago. I'm using one of my favorite "UFO" tube complements in my preamp and the only other changes are updated firmware on my Denafrips DAC and a nicer cables running from my laptop and CD transport to the DAC. All of which were nice upgrades, but nothing game changing.
I confirmed (yet again) that for me, a tube preamp is an absolute necessity. It adds just a little bit of secret sauce to the sound that I've got to have. Perhaps it does for me what a 300B amp does for others.
I put in my favorite GZ33 rectifiers and new SR Orange fuses yesterday. I forget the fuses were brand new so certainly running them in has improved the sound as well, although I noticed a change for the better right out of the box. I haven't done any more tube rolling although I have a long list of tubes to try, starting with O[A|B]3 VR tubes in front and my favorite EL822 power tubes. I may get started on that project later today.
I'm not going to lie, it felt pretty good to update my sig to take the "on order" out of the UFO25 line.