[5aces]

Do you find that using the 20 db mute takes away some of the fidelity? When Driving my HE-6's through the speaker taps of the AU-717 if I use the 20 db muting I think it slightly reduces the impact of the lows

Is Sansui AU 717 still giving you a perception of less bass impact when the mute switch is engaged?

Most of these mute switches introduce a resistor into the circuit to get the volume down.

Generally,resistors shouldn't drift out of spec and will either pass current or not,you could take a look for your own satisfaction.

I know with some Sansui models you get a lot of volume early on the volume control,nice for speakers but not so much for headphones.

The mute switch will provide more flexibility of graduations on volume knob for some headphones.

Bass is a big part of modern music and most people need a specific amount to satisfy their sense.

For an experiment,dial back the bass on the tone control and kick in the loudness contour-see if you like that on -20db,one never knows it may be the in between setting you are seeking...

None of my current Sansui amps has the loudness switch to try but the CA preamplifier has a 150-300-600 Hz selector to augment dialing in the bass.

 

[sluker]

Thanks,
I will play around with the loudness.
By the way, with the HE-6's I am getting the sense that the HP out gives better soundstage than the speaker taps. Not so much bigger but better instrument placement and separation. Without the -20db I am comfortable at -36 with the HP out but only -47db with the speaker taps. Could this be the cause of the difference?
Quote:

Is Sansui AU 717 still giving you a perception of less bass impact when the mute switch is engaged?
Most of these mute switches introduce a resistor into the circuit to get the volume down.
Generally,resistors shouldn't drift out of spec and will either pass current or not,you could take a look for your own satisfaction.
I know with some Sansui models you get a lot of volume early on the volume control,nice for speakers but not so much for headphones.
The mute switch will provide more flexibility of graduations on volume knob for some headphones.
Bass is a big part of modern music and most people need a specific amount to satisfy their sense.
For an experiment,dial back the bass on the tone control and kick in the loudness contour-see if you like that on -20db,one never knows it may be the in between setting you are seeking...
None of my current Sansui amps has the loudness switch to try but the CA preamplifier has a 150-300-600 Hz selector to augment dialing in the bass.

 

 

[5aces]

I'll send you a .pdf of the Sansui AU 517/717 service manual.

I don't know what kind of box you are using as a headphone tap on the speakers.

Passive using resistors,different values on the resistors (if the volume is too high you increase the value of the resistor) you can confirm that for yourself.

Will vary the volume but shouldn't change the signal qualities.

 

[sluker]

Not using any "box" its going direct

 that may be the issue.

 

[5aces]

I have seen these devices scattered about the site to get headphones hooked up to speaker amplifiers.

1)The "Headphone Adaptor" by Head-Direct for some of the HE series of phones:

2)ART HeadTap:

3)ROLLS PM52 Headphone Tap:


The latter two are passive,using resistors and I believe even allow IEM's to be tapped into stage speakers.

You would have to make a custom 1/4 inch stereo jack cable to plug into the device and splice into the speaker outputs,unless you are using pro audio gear.

The Head-Direct HE-Adapter is not for any high or average efficiency headphones, such as HE-300 and HE-500 says the website,same concept though and wires straight up to the speaker terminals,using the front panel amplifier volume control.

 

[jc9394]

Interesting, wonder if I can use it with LCD-2.

 

[musicman59]

As long as you are under 100 watts per channel into 8 ohms you don't need the box. The LCD-3 max inout is 15 watts at 50 ohms. 100 watts at 8 ohms are about 16 watts at 50 ohms so if you amplifier is under 100 let's say 80 you are fine without the box. I personally tried the LCD-2 with a 50 watts per channel class A amp and they sounded the best I have heard them and I am driving my HE-6 wit the same amplifier.
 
 

 

[Wharfrat]

WharfRat I basically agree with what you are saying about Pioneer vs Marantz. With regard to Fisher, my KX-100 is very warm and tubey.  Works well with the HE-6, but not a good combo for cans like the LCD-2 or JVC DX-1000.

Originally Posted by moodyrn /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 

 

X2 to on the impressions of the marantz sound vs pioneer sound. I would say the kenwood is the sweet spot. The pioneer mates better with darker sounding, or lush sounding cans. The marantz sounds better with neutral or slightly bright sounding cans. They both still sounds excellent with anthing though. The kenwood is just slightly warm, so it mates well with pretty much everything. And unlike other warm amps or receivers, it doesn't the highs at the very top.  I had no problem with anything I plugged into it, and everything sounded excellent.
 
As far as the fisher goes, it's both better than all of the vintage ss gear I've tried or owned and, not as good. Let me explain, the fisher like Skylab says is a very warm, very lush and romantic sounding tube amp. With cans that's already lush, it can be too much of a good thing, But with the right headphone and speaker pairing, the sound is beyond excellent, and down rite addictive. I modded my headphone out to be much more powerful than stock, and it can drive anything short of an he-6(use speaker taps for those). But like Skylab, I really like it with the he-6, and my T70s. Heck even my d7000. But the d7000 don't sound anything like stock. The cups are upgraded with lawton's sheoak cups, and I done partial diymarkl mods. So they now sound very neutral with just a touch of lushness, so not too lush for the fisher.
 

Guys! Thanks for your comments on the Fisher....I have heard the HE-6 out of a Eddie Currrent Balancing Act amp and Ayon Skylla DAC and was blown away by the combo, but the BA is a higher quality parts tube design.   So its a bit of a relief to learn that both of you found the Fisher to have enough power to drive the HE-6.  Bummer to hear the LCD-2 did not fare so well in your estimation because I wanted the LCD unit particularly for the Pioneer.  Can't afford another TOTL can like the HE-6 just to dig the vintage Fisher sound.... it also looks like it won't be too good of a pairing with the AD2000 either.  I do have a D7000 which is much more sensitive relative to the HE-6, so a Fisher should goose it pretty good.  Was up to 2 am on a work night yesterday looking for vintage tube integrateds or pre amps that could drive today's cans and noted a few Fisher KX models have headphone outputs...gonna figure out the differences between the models before I put my nose to the Net paths that will certianly lead to E-Bay and CL finds.
 
This got me to wondering if vintage 70' Audio Research tube amps had headphone jacks....(ARC is too expensive anyways, but William Zane Johnson was such a leading designer of high quality tube and ss products back then along with Saul Marantz, Sid Harman, Jim Bongiorno, to name a few of the more well known ones, so my interest is piqued more than just a tad).  I don't expect an answer from anybody since I got very little response to my previous posts about the McIntoshs.  But curiousity kills this cat...
 

 

[Wharfrat]

Quote:

I have seen these devices scattered about the site to get headphones hooked up to speaker amplifiers.
1)The "Headphone Adaptor" by Head-Direct for some of the HE series of phones:

2)ART HeadTap:

3)ROLLS PM52 Headphone Tap:

The latter two are passive,using resistors and I believe even allow IEM's to be tapped into stage speakers.
You would have to make a custom 1/4 inch stereo jack cable to plug into the device and splice into the speaker outputs,unless you are using pro audio gear.
The Head-Direct HE-Adapter is not for any high or average efficiency headphones, such as HE-300 and HE-500 says the website,same concept though and wires straight up to the speaker terminals,using the front panel amplifier volume control.

Thanks so much!  I was trying to figure outhow to use the speaker tap adapter cable with its freakishly hard to match female 4 pin XLR jack....as I have no headphones with male 4 pin XLR connectors and further more dreaded the thought of modding a tube amp with DIY&FU resistor soldering.
 
This brings to mind a question...do those tap adapters work only with SS units?  I recall something about frying output transformers for tube units if not properly impedance matched....and if not, prophylatic adjustments would need to be made for tube units to prevent that.
 
 

 

[RexAeterna]

KR-9600, I really miss it. It was just too big to use just as a headphone amp after I got rid of the speakers I was using it on. I looking into getting a 9100 to replace it until the marantz fell in my lap.

i always wanted to try the big kenwoods. i like kenwood. they don't get enough praise for most of their line-up. their sigma power amps are freakin amazing but i see no praise for them. if you need a small amp for headphone duty i defiantly recommend the kenwood kr-720. you can get them so cheap it's worth a try. once you get the dc offset and bias set back to factory spec the amp will probably be one of cleanest amps you'll get. very under-rated.

i don't see much praise around here as well for yamaha but only their CR series. in the 80's with their ''black-faced/case'' gear is where it's at. that's where yamaha hit their pinnacle and become monsters in their power amp line-up. most people ignore them cause they're not silver or pretty looking. there is lot of black 80's gear that will wipe the floor on some of the 70's stuff. while companies like marantz sold out in the late 70's and pioneer i believe as well, yamaha,kenwood and even sansui still tried pushing the envelop with toroidal power transformers and some high-end power amps had very large dual- power transformers for the positive and negative outputs and very large caps cause low-impedance driving was the thing during the mid to late 80's. most of the power amps at that time had no issues handling 2ohm nominal speaker loads.

yamaha even only one who made a 80lb 8 channel discrete HT reciever with dual- power transformers and can drive 300wpc@2ohm's! but after that last attempt yamaha went downhill cause their current stereo amps are not very good. they look pretty and have balanced outputs but still not near the same level as their old power amps. i'm still surprised though they atleast tried in the HT part but wasn't very popular cause after their MX-XXX power amps they seem to just lose their status since they didn't have the same marketing level as pioneer and marantz still had.

 

[Skylab]

I have always wanted to try a high end vintage Kenwood as well.  Just haven't found one locally yet.

 

[BmWr75]

Rob,
 
I'm listening right now to 24/96 files via a Squeezebox Touch feeding a Kenwood KR-9050 driving Ohm Walsh Two speakers.  

 
Happy Holidays!!
Scott
 

 

[moodyrn]

Yeah kenwoods are very under-rated. I kinda hated selling mine, I'm still on the look out for a good condition 9100 though. My only negative about the 9600 was it uses much higher value resistors for the headphone out than the pioneers do. I could drive the he-6 effortlessly through the headphone out. I couldn't go past 10:00, and 8:30 to 9:00 was a very comfortable listening level. The kenwood could get them to a decent volume, but they were under damped and didn't sound anything like from the speaker taps. But on the other hand, that made it possible the drive iems, and it still had plenty of power for anything other than an he-6.
 
But as much as I liked the pioneer, the kenwood just sounded better. But that thing was almost too big to even sit on top of my component rack. I knew it was huge but after getting the 2325, I was floored at how much smaller it was than the kenwood. The kenwood really makes it look tiny. It's even small compared to sx1010 I had. That's really a good thing since I could even put this on my night stand next to my bed. It's small enough to only use as a headphone amp. But it is however just as heavy as the pioneer was, well almost as heavy weighing in at 49.7(out of the case) pounds. So even-though it's small compared to other totl receivers I've had, there's still a lot in there. The transformer is just as big as the one in the kenwood!

 

[Meewoo]

Quote:

Rob,
 
I'm listening right now to 24/96 files via a Squeezebox Touch feeding a Kenwood KR-9050 driving Ohm Walsh Two speakers.  

 
Happy Holidays!!
Scott
 

This is my first time to see such a nice KR-9050!! Wow!!
 
I have little brother KR-8050, it has nice sweet Kenny sound but a very fast pace. Do you find it a little quick?
 
I have (had) Kenny Kr-9400, Kr-8050, Ka-7300 and Ka-7100, among them, I prefer 7300, followed by 9400.
 
 
 

 

[Meewoo]

Quote:

i don't see much praise around here as well for yamaha but only their CR series. in the 80's with their ''black-faced/case'' gear is where it's at. that's where yamaha hit their pinnacle and become monsters in their power amp line-up. most people ignore them cause they're not silver or pretty looking. there is lot of black 80's gear that will wipe the floor on some of the 70's stuff. while companies like marantz sold out in the late 70's and pioneer i believe as well, yamaha,kenwood and even sansui still tried pushing the envelop with toroidal power transformers and some high-end power amps had very large dual- power transformers for the positive and negative outputs and very large caps cause low-impedance driving was the thing during the mid to late 80's. most of the power amps at that time had no issues handling 2ohm nominal speaker loads.

If we span our search to middle 80's, then I think there are many small players made good stuff. (Adcom, Nakamichi, Technics, JVC and American startup companies)
It's really hard to pick out good stuff from more brands in 80's. And more sleepers are still under radar.
 
And I think I am the only person in this thread to push 70's Rotel stuff.