fejnomit
1000+ Head-Fier
On the topic of transformers, as Donald has noted, a transformer per se is not automatically a better thing. They have to be the right transformer and that - for me at least - was the problem with the EC gear I owned and why, in the end, I sold both the ZD and the BA - tone. Although I don't agree that either amp has anywhere near the resolving power of the Stratus - or that they have a wider soundstage either - I did NOT find this to the case - it really came down to a question of the way those retrieved microdetails sounded. EC sounds to my ears veiled. Like there is some nice cotton and teflor dielectric between me and the music. This, after endless tube and cable rolling, I determined was a result of the Electraprint transformers that Craig prefers. I do not think they sound - watch out - real. It's an effect that can only come out through direct comparison of one amp with another - and through deeper searching of one's own personal feeling for music. It's like those times when you're listening in your car and you say to yourself - wow this XM jazz station must have some pretty high end equipment, this **** sounds dope. Then you go to your main speaker rig and listen to some of the same albums or musicians and you are suddenly transported into a realm of organic reality that had been utterly missing from the car experience. In relation to itself the car sound was balanced and detailed and quite dynamic. But in comparison to a 45-based amp, for example, it is revealed to be a digital simulacrum of an instrument and a voice. Like playing around with a higher-end synth and thinking - wow, that really sounds like a sax - and then you listen to Sonny Rollins' Saxaphone Collosus on vinyl through an all DHT playback chain and you hear an actual, tangible brass instrument pumping actual, tangible air from a actual, tangible, living, breathing human being's lungs into the contiguous space around you. This is why measurements are at times so irrelevant. The radio and the synth probably measured better than my amp. But those who are addicted to DHTs - as I am - are in love with their tone, first and foremost. Properly implemented they sound *live* and having spent far too much of my life at live concerts, this is what I crave. I am willing to admit that this is entirely subjective - meaning this craving for the real - but a DHT amp's ability to get closer to the music is not subjective. That is fact when you have a lot of experience with live music. So tube warmth versus SS dynamism and detail is a bogus argument. DHTs - as the 2A3 appears in the Stratus - has it all. Said otherwise: who cares if an amp can *drive* a certain pair of headphoneif what is driven into it is a false simulacrum of an actual instrument?
