Antonio eres español o tal vez Português??@DomT Bring the Portuguese mistress round to fan you, and leave Mrs Dom to take care of the amp
Antonio eres español o tal vez Português??@DomT Bring the Portuguese mistress round to fan you, and leave Mrs Dom to take care of the amp
Would hope to buy secondhand and probably don’t need to spend more than £10k on the amps. A secondhand 15 year old ARC Ref 3 for example is £3.5k.
Not sure if you have auditioned the Enleum AMP-23R. From reviews it may well be closer to the ARC in terms of character but may not have the grunt to drive speakers like the ATC.Hello everyone
Now that all my gear is here in Portugal I have been able to compare my Marantz PM11S2 against my Audio Research SP17/D130. I need something that combines the best of both because neither is better at everything. Ok it’s not really a need. But it sort of might be.
History. I had an Audio Research LS25 mk2 and VS115 when I lived in Spain. Undoubtedly the best amp combination that I have ever owned. But heat from the 8x 6650 valves as well as non-auto bias and not family friendly meant that it got replaced. The best of the S/S integrateds that I heard to replace it was the Marantz PM11S2 that I have had for the past 11 years; I had never owned Marantz previously but it sounded more right than anything else. During the last 11 years I have compared it to the PM10 but wasn’t keen and the NuVista 800 (having owned an M3) and Naim SuperNait 3. The PM10 didn’t give anything more and the NuVista was grunt and warmth but the wrong direction and the Naim was just way off the pace in all directions. I did buy a Leben CS300XS that I ran alongside the Marantz for three years but whilst it was great it didn’t do the grunt of the Marantz. Most recently I had a Luxman 505 on home demo and whilst it was interesting in some ways it was a step backwards because on funk music it just couldn’t compete with the Marantz. So nothing at sensible money toppled the Marantz.
I was looking for a valve premap with phono stage for the studio and I saw an Audio Research SP17 for sale that I bought blind when temporarily in the UK. I also bought a fully refurbished ARC D130 as it made sense and after a looong search a pair of ATC SCM11. A really great combo that I used for 6 months in Nottingham.
I also had the chance in the UK to compare the ARC to Accuphase E270 and E380, Marantz PM10, Norma 140, and Hegel 390. I preferred the Accuphase to the Norma, Marantz and Hegel and so the Accuphase had 2 home demos against the ARC. The ARC comfortably won and one of the key reasons was bass extension; a lot of amps seem to have unrealistically tight/light bass.
Fast forward. Now I have the ARC and Marantz in the same room (but without the ATCs - sold to a wammer) and can compare them. Hmmm. The Marantz wins on bass extension (just), outline edge of instrument definition, transient speed and punch. The ARC combo wins on instrument separation, tonal textures, transparency, intelligibility, musical expression and a ‘realness’. If only I could have both in one amp!
But wait a minute. The same is true of my Auralic Altair G1 vs Innuos Zen Mini/Power Supply (into Auralic DAC). The Auralic has the leading edges, a bit more detail, and the Innuos has more punch, musical expression and tone. Hmmm maybe you can’t have everything?
Unless maybe it means lots and lots of money?
Which amps combine the best of the Marantz and ARC combo? Could be an integrated or pre/power. Am also considering just a pre with XLR outputs for a pair of active ATCs. Perhaps a better Audio Research preamp? Am not keen on a valve power amp. And ARC S/S power amps are rare and some have unobtainium transformers. If going active it would probably be ATC 19 or 40 depending on the room size of the music room that we are building.
Anyway hope to hear some interesting thoughts.
I am Spanish and my wife Portuguese.@DomT No English, are you going to tell me Mrs Dom is Portuguese
Thanks Karl my local dealer here does Michi.Just read a very positive review of the Rotel Michi S5 in Stereophile. Not the first of such comments either. Presumably a brand that will be easily available in Portugal too.
[URL]https://www.stereophile.com/content/rotel-michi-s5-power-amplifier[/URL]
It’s the Moonriver 404 Reference with phono stage.
fascinating to read your thoughts . i saw a mint one at midland audio at 2995 recently . still there i thinkDom, I was so excited to read your latest post, as mentioned briefly in you other post about the ARC bypass option I am in an almost identical situation to you, and your findings are SO similar to mine it's spooky! I too have the Audio Research DSi200 here on demo (been here just about a month now) and I have been giving it some serious evaluation against one of Musical Fidelity's "monsters" - the kW550. If you will forgive me some extended ramblings I'd like to add my thoughts to yours - I think we are talking pretty much the same language despite the very different speakers they are driving!
The kW is larger than life in pretty much every way. OK, not quite D'Agostino large, but very substantial in both weight, power, and heat output! Hybrid in design, it's a real brute of an amp, and although it was capable of some amazing performances in some circumstances, I found it too inconsistent to be a "keeper". I described it as a bit like a night club bouncer in an Armani suit - more muscle than you'd ever need but not capable of subtlety when required. It injected a sense of fun into everything I played through it, but sometimes music doesn't need "fun", it needs to caress and seduce and cajole, and that's where the kW fell down. It's as though it doesn't know how to chill out when the music requires a light touch, so fun though it was, it had to go back. Like your view of the M6 I also felt the kW was more forward, forthright perhaps I should say, which was exciting for a bit but I found tiring on longer listening and when the volume was wound up. It did have dynamics aplenty though, I never once felt it was running out of steam or incapable of giving transients their full weight when needed. You'd hope not with 200 amps of peak current available! I said elsewhere that I really wanted to love this amp - it's a tempting ownership proposition - looks great, satisfies the "bloke" in me with its size, weight, those three umbilical cables connecting PSU to the main unit, it's quite the package. Unfortunately instead of loving it I had to settle for "really liking" it, which just isn't enough.
The DSi200 is an astonishing performer. It shows up what is wrong (for me) with the MF in no uncertain terms. The sheer sense of finesse and tangibility it brings to everything it plays is a game-changer for me. It brings incredible focus and precision to each individual strand of the music, giving instruments their own space and allowing me to hear right into the performance, presenting them on a huge soundstage (when the production is good). It's adept at letting you know when you're listening to a multitracked recording but without detracting from things - it holds everything together as an entire performance rather than just presenting a load of bits. I've never found it so easy to hear multiple vocalists as individuals, when they are mixed to be close together (e.g. the illusion of one person standing right behind another). Usually I can hear the separate harmonies but not really pick them out as individual singers, but with the DSi200 it was child's play. It's a similar trick that my old Gato used to pull off too, although the ARC seems to do it even better.
The DSi200 also has incredible dynamics - quite the equal I felt of the kW. It does lose out a bit in absolute bass heft, although I wouldn't describe it as bass-light in any terms, and counters with better texture, making it a lot easier to hear the difference between acoustic and electric basses for example. I've been playing Mike Oldfield's "Crises" quite a lot lately - it's an album I have loved for decades and know it inside-out. Even the standard pressing is well-recorded, and through the DSi200 the snare shots fired out like rifle shots, and the fast double-kick drum passage toward the end of the title track came across with clarity, precision and real heft. As the ending builds to its huge climax I could really feel the music swell and swell, the amp just shrugged its shoulders and delivered without any sense of strain at all.
Two killer-blows for me. Firstly, when listening to mediocre or poor recordings the ARC tells me so, but crucially it doesn't ruin my enjoyment of the music, it. The kW almost goaded me into listening out for the deficits - I found it hard to relax with average-quality recordings. This is SO important to me because I don't have a library of audiophile plinky-plonky LPs, but I do have hundreds of rather ordinary productions and some downright poor ones too.... but of those I have listened to this past month I have been able to enjoy each one regardless of its production values, instead of having to cherry-pick what I play for sound quality. I don't want to use the silk purse / sow's ear analogy because I don't really believe that's possible, but what I will say is that the DSi200 doesn't draw unnecessary attention to the deficits.
The second killer-blow for me was that it can do what the kW just couldn't - chill out. Simple music, you know, the dreaded "girl with an acoustic guitar" stuff sounds so beguiling! Play Amos Lee, Suzanne Vega's self-titled album, some Debussy or Chopin piano music and the sense of ease and calm pervades. It's beguiling and enveloping, and totally in-step with the demands. What it doesn't sound like is a valve amp, or a class-A SS, and nor for that matter does it fit the usual (and unfounded) Class-D stereotype either. There's even-handed tonality, texture and colour, scale, dynamics, presence and all the good stuff that us audiophiles love to wax lyrical over, but most importantly there's a connection to the music and the performers, and for me that counts for more than all the "hi-fi" stuff put together.
I would say that at the price you mentioned the ARC is an absolute billy-bargain - snap it up! I have paid a lot more than that for the one I'm demoing, but to be honest I still think it's worth the money. One aside - as far as I'm aware (as an ex-owner) Gato does not convert incoming analogue signals to digital, but obviously it does have its own digital inputs (with or without the NPM streaming module) which get upsampled to 24/192, but that doesn't apply to the RCA or XLR inputs. It's also an excellent amp and may well give you another option
Thanks so much for the detailed thoughts. Totally agree with you. Seriously I don’t disagree with anything. Just watched the latest Bond film on BluRay through the DSI200. Explosions were as impactful as my PM11S2 and that was a surprise as the Marantz sounds more punchy. When there were explosions we jumped out of our seats. That never happens with my Marantz PM-KI Pearl. But the amp is not fatiguing.Dom, I was so excited to read your latest post, as mentioned briefly in you other post about the ARC bypass option I am in an almost identical situation to you, and your findings are SO similar to mine it's spooky! I too have the Audio Research DSi200 here on demo (been here just about a month now) and I have been giving it some serious evaluation against one of Musical Fidelity's "monsters" - the kW550. If you will forgive me some extended ramblings I'd like to add my thoughts to yours - I think we are talking pretty much the same language despite the very different speakers they are driving!
The kW is larger than life in pretty much every way. OK, not quite D'Agostino large, but very substantial in both weight, power, and heat output! Hybrid in design, it's a real brute of an amp, and although it was capable of some amazing performances in some circumstances, I found it too inconsistent to be a "keeper". I described it as a bit like a night club bouncer in an Armani suit - more muscle than you'd ever need but not capable of subtlety when required. It injected a sense of fun into everything I played through it, but sometimes music doesn't need "fun", it needs to caress and seduce and cajole, and that's where the kW fell down. It's as though it doesn't know how to chill out when the music requires a light touch, so fun though it was, it had to go back. Like your view of the M6 I also felt the kW was more forward, forthright perhaps I should say, which was exciting for a bit but I found tiring on longer listening and when the volume was wound up. It did have dynamics aplenty though, I never once felt it was running out of steam or incapable of giving transients their full weight when needed. You'd hope not with 200 amps of peak current available! I said elsewhere that I really wanted to love this amp - it's a tempting ownership proposition - looks great, satisfies the "bloke" in me with its size, weight, those three umbilical cables connecting PSU to the main unit, it's quite the package. Unfortunately instead of loving it I had to settle for "really liking" it, which just isn't enough.
The DSi200 is an astonishing performer. It shows up what is wrong (for me) with the MF in no uncertain terms. The sheer sense of finesse and tangibility it brings to everything it plays is a game-changer for me. It brings incredible focus and precision to each individual strand of the music, giving instruments their own space and allowing me to hear right into the performance, presenting them on a huge soundstage (when the production is good). It's adept at letting you know when you're listening to a multitracked recording but without detracting from things - it holds everything together as an entire performance rather than just presenting a load of bits. I've never found it so easy to hear multiple vocalists as individuals, when they are mixed to be close together (e.g. the illusion of one person standing right behind another). Usually I can hear the separate harmonies but not really pick them out as individual singers, but with the DSi200 it was child's play. It's a similar trick that my old Gato used to pull off too, although the ARC seems to do it even better.
The DSi200 also has incredible dynamics - quite the equal I felt of the kW. It does lose out a bit in absolute bass heft, although I wouldn't describe it as bass-light in any terms, and counters with better texture, making it a lot easier to hear the difference between acoustic and electric basses for example. I've been playing Mike Oldfield's "Crises" quite a lot lately - it's an album I have loved for decades and know it inside-out. Even the standard pressing is well-recorded, and through the DSi200 the snare shots fired out like rifle shots, and the fast double-kick drum passage toward the end of the title track came across with clarity, precision and real heft. As the ending builds to its huge climax I could really feel the music swell and swell, the amp just shrugged its shoulders and delivered without any sense of strain at all.
Two killer-blows for me. Firstly, when listening to mediocre or poor recordings the ARC tells me so, but crucially it doesn't ruin my enjoyment of the music, it. The kW almost goaded me into listening out for the deficits - I found it hard to relax with average-quality recordings. This is SO important to me because I don't have a library of audiophile plinky-plonky LPs, but I do have hundreds of rather ordinary productions and some downright poor ones too.... but of those I have listened to this past month I have been able to enjoy each one regardless of its production values, instead of having to cherry-pick what I play for sound quality. I don't want to use the silk purse / sow's ear analogy because I don't really believe that's possible, but what I will say is that the DSi200 doesn't draw unnecessary attention to the deficits.
The second killer-blow for me was that it can do what the kW just couldn't - chill out. Simple music, you know, the dreaded "girl with an acoustic guitar" stuff sounds so beguiling! Play Amos Lee, Suzanne Vega's self-titled album, some Debussy or Chopin piano music and the sense of ease and calm pervades. It's beguiling and enveloping, and totally in-step with the demands. What it doesn't sound like is a valve amp, or a class-A SS, and nor for that matter does it fit the usual (and unfounded) Class-D stereotype either. There's even-handed tonality, texture and colour, scale, dynamics, presence and all the good stuff that us audiophiles love to wax lyrical over, but most importantly there's a connection to the music and the performers, and for me that counts for more than all the "hi-fi" stuff put together.
I would say that at the price you mentioned the ARC is an absolute billy-bargain - snap it up! I have paid a lot more than that for the one I'm demoing, but to be honest I still think it's worth the money. One aside - as far as I'm aware (as an ex-owner) Gato does not convert incoming analogue signals to digital, but obviously it does have its own digital inputs (with or without the NPM streaming module) which get upsampled to 24/192, but that doesn't apply to the RCA or XLR inputs. It's also an excellent amp and may well give you another option
I listened to a Hegel 390 at a dealer vs Marantz PM10 and Norma 70 and Accuphase E380. I preferred the Accuphase because of the VU meters. No seriously. Ok because it had a very transparent, delegate and more relaxed sound than the Marantz and Hegel. The Norma was also good but a bit too smooth for me. There are lots of great amps out there and it’s such a personal thing. But I love the value on some of these older amps.Oh, and VU meters are always worth the extra
@hifinutt Phil, that one at MaX is the very one currently residing chez-moi. And it really is minty-mint - well OK I have searched hard and found a tiny hairline scratch on the top plate but you have to look really hard to find it. The previous owner obviously took great care of it - even put the build sheet and instruction manual in a plastic wallet to keep them clean. It's top money really, but to get one as nice as this I think I'm prepared to pay the price
If you really like it then the value is for you to judge. The MAX price is too high, imo, but John is a reliable dealer so that needs to be factored in. I recall that Fanthorpes had one of these for sale for a long while at a much lower price. The price Dom mentions is about right for a dealer sale with warranty. £1650-1750 as a used buy from an individual, tops.Agreed, Dom, for the money it's going to be pretty difficult to usurp it. I'm pretty certain this one is going to be staying here - out of fairness I do have one other amp to try out after the Peachtree (which is excellent, but for me doesn't do any more than the ARC and costs £1400 more for the pair). I'm going to try a Hegel - have heard some of the big-boy models at bake-offs but obviously in unfamiliar systems and unfamiliar rooms, so apart from thinking that I like the sound and think it's worth a go I can't say how it will play out. But my budget would only stretch to one of the smaller models new, I don't even think that I could stretch up to, say, a 390 second hand. Problem is that I'm already predisposed against it just because I love the ARC, and I need to clear those thoughts and give it a fair chance to show what it's capable of.
Oh, and VU meters are always worth the extra
@hifinutt Phil, that one at MaX is the very one currently residing chez-moi. And it really is minty-mint - well OK I have searched hard and found a tiny hairline scratch on the top plate but you have to look really hard to find it. The previous owner obviously took great care of it - even put the build sheet and instruction manual in a plastic wallet to keep them clean. It's top money really, but to get one as nice as this I think I'm prepared to pay the price