Amps speaker companies use

MartinLogan Audio Owners Forum

Help Support MartinLogan Audio Owners Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bonzo

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 19, 2013
Messages
1,370
Reaction score
0
Location
London
Got this on the web. I have heard Rockport only at a show and have not heard Gryphon, so those aside, it is not surprising I find Magico boring and clinical and love the Verity.

"It can be telling to look at what some of the best loud speaker companies use in their own systems. My personal favorite, Rockport is all Gryphon, with the mighty (and ruinously expensive) Colosseum monos driving their Arrakis flagship. The reference amps at Magico are Boulder, Spectral, and Soulution. Wilson uses VTL Siegfrieds. Verity uses Wavac and Nagra. "
 
if memory serves me correctly when we gathered in Lawrence seven years ago M/L was using Pass (A/AB) amplification.
 
I think M/L chops and changes? Munich was Moon, here in UK it is Krell or AR. Vandys used AR. Verity is my favorite box because its midrange is flowing like a Logan. I heard it with Passlabs. But the newer higher efficiency range is good, the older Parsifals to me are not involving enough.
 
I don't think the folks at ML have a specific brand of amp they use... the CLX's i heard there were being driven by a Parasound amp. I've also seen Pass labs and McIntosh amps there.
 
I saw there, Conrad Johnson too. This was some time ago, when Brent Hefley was working with ML. Mr. Jim Power told me that they try to use the most common hi-end brands to drive the MLs. These brands are like Mark Levinson, Jeff Rowland, Spectral, Conrad Johnson, Audio Research, Krell, and some others that I can not recall. His point of view was, "...most known brands must be driving our product, because the panels are not easy to drive...and we experiment with different brands, and listen the benefits and the tonal balance of each. All of them are great products as ML is too"...
 
Speaking of Spectral, what is the difference between Spectral, Krell, and Sanders while driving MLs? I find it tough to demo Spectral and Sanders here
 
I do like very much Spectral. Mr, Keith Johnson, of Reference Recording is the chief of engineering design of Spectral. I met spectral at the SCES at Chicago back in the 82. Their preamplifier, the DMC-10 was a classic as I remember. The construction was pristine. They had a plastic top cover where you could see all the components and the PC board. This was my very first time to be exposed to a such quality built, having an electronic workshop, and servicing many high-end brands. It is a jewel. Of course I got one.

In my dads system, he had all McIntosch gear, and he was using the model 28 at that time. When I hooked up this preamp, his exclamation was a big "wow". He asked me: where is this new sound is coming from? I said: From this silver color thin preamplifier. And not only the sound. Take a look inside of this unit and tell me do you think. I took the top cover, and another wow came through...

Mr Sanders knows about electrostatic load. He had designed and built great amplifiers, having this peculiar load in his mind. Their sound is very neutral. And a beast too. Tons of clean power, and great with driving electrostatics. Sound? Let your ears decide. I am more into tube sound and digital power amps...SS in my ears, it produces ringing and tinnitus. I do not why. This is me, something is not right perhaps with my ears, so I thank to God, there are tubes and digital amps. I do not get the tinnitus with the tube gear or digital amps...yes, it is strange, odd.

Krell is good too. Big power SS and clean. To my liking, too much bass, but at the customer's place, the cables was Transparent, and we all know that Transparent is about the bass. So, I can't say more. The overall sound was clean, highs were right and good sense of image, as I recall.
Happy listening!
 
Last edited:
Isn't Spectral SS as well? I know Krell is full bodied and has bass, is Sanders or Spectral similar? Will they pair well with valve preamps?
 
Kedar...my liking could be different than yours. Spectral power amp, I think is driven by MOS-FET type of transistors. Their behavior are like tubes, but are SS. The Rogers are Bi-polar transistors. But he uses a lot of output power transistors...and a very stable power supply, with high quality regulators. You must listen them first. I am with tubes, as you do know.
 
VTLs and Wilsons. That makes sense to me. The big VTLs can pull of sounding really quite real. Far more so that Dan's or Krell's efforts IMHO. Never heard them with Wilsons but big ARCs worked better with Wilsons to my ears than the usual suspects Kedar lists - Absolute Sounds kit of some sort is what they end up with over here most of the time.
 
I had the great pleasure of spending a good part of my day today at the YG Acoustics factory. They use older Krell, newer D'Angostino and my AURALiC Merak's in their reference system.

A few years ago I got to tour the Avalon factory as well. If I remember correctly the were using ARC and Ayre in their listening room.
 
I recall a 4 store building, near to a railroad, where you could see all kinds of prototypes. One really got my attention, a double cabinet with 8 inches woofers, in a kind of Y shape, and the stat panel. It was just leaned back in a corner. There were many rooms, with all kind of electronics. All the team was wearing white lab coats. You could see almost all of what they were doing, but not all. Some of the goods are top secret, one commented. I thought that I was going to see a lot of electronic equipment, with audio signal generators, and test instruments for distortion, and scopes, like Tectronics or similar, but did not see any. Also, I was told that they could show me what I was seen and not more. Mr. Jim Power, Brent Hefley and another person was with us.

We were four, my sons and a dear friend who is like another son to me. This was in 2001. Gayle was going to have his engagement, and of course we were invited to his event at his home. When we got to his house, he said, here is my system (he had two), one for the living room and part of the dining room. The speakers were a pair of Aeon I, driven by two little tubed mono-blocks. Remember that output tubes were 6CA7/EL34s, but do not remember the brand. And of course his Statement System, with Wadia CD player. There were a Sony cd player, very esoteric player too. The Logos for center channel, and for rears the special white color Stylos, that almost vanish in the room.

It was a lot of fun, happy listening!
 
In exhibitions you can see amps which a dealer or importer represents and this may have nothing to do with what a speaker company is using for in-house testing. Most likely speaker companies use variety of different brands and models of amps as reference how their product generally behaves. Also speaker company is not likely to promote some other manufacturer's brand even if they use it for testing, unless they are both from same mother company :rolleyes:

Having something for reference doesn't necessary mean it is considered SOTA, just think about recording studios with mini monitors for checking how their production transfers to average user with average equipment - and yet theres's ppl buying those same monitors coz they've seen them being used in studios...
 

Latest posts

Back
Top