Cary 805 SET Monoblocks for Summits?

Not one to leave well enough alone I've been considering going to a tube amp monoblock setup for my Summits. I'm considering a pair of Cary Audio 805 C 50 watt set monos or similiar. Has anyone tried these amps with Summits or any of the other larger MLs? If so, how is the bass performance with these? I expect the highs and midrange would be good. I'd really like a pair of Art Audio Adagio SET monoblocks but I'd literally have to sell a car to afford those.

I also wouldn't rule out a stereo tubed amp and have been looking at a McIntosh MC 2102 Stereo amp. It's push pull with KT88s but seems like a well made unit with plenty of tube power behind it.

I'd like to move my component rack off the to side instead of between the speakers so a 20 foot run of balanced cable may be in order. Or will a single ended interconnect still be adequate at that length?

Your thoughts, opinions or experiences are encouraged.

Craig,

You got me there.... you have probably read that I've been eyeing them 805 to complete the Cary collection I have going. So I'm interested in hearing/reading what the responses are to your thread...

Theoretically SET amps, and PP amps but to a lesser extent, with low to no NFB and typical four to ten ohm output impedances strongly interact with the changing impedance of the, in this case panel, as the woofer amp is a very high, relatively constant input impedance, anyway, the interaction with the speaker panel impedance will cause large deviations in FR. This may or not be a problem for you in the real world or it may be a deal breaker. My $.02!

We had a play with our Audio Aero 40w SET monoblocs on the Monolith panels a couple of years ago. Absolutely hopeless with no dynamics and rolled off highs.

Summit has easier load characteristics in the panels but I suspect it is the wrong amplifier type.

Kevin

The Cary 805 is one of the more powerful SET amps with 4,8 and 16 Ohm taps. I thought someone else on this forum used that combination. I have an Art Audio 300BXLS Set stereo amp that puts out 24 watts. It sounds nice with the Summits and has good soundstaging imaging and an overall pleasing sound but my SS Electrocompaniet mono amps are just a better match all around with the Summits. The most notable difference is that the highs are more extended with the Electrocompaniets.

Another option is to take the Electrocompaniet mono amp configuration to a higher level with a pair of Electrocompaniet Nemo mono block amps if I can find any.

If SETS are not recommended then what tube amp and/or tube mono block amps are a good match for the Summits? There has to be some Summit tube amp combinations used by some of you club members.

We know the electrostats are current hogs at the frequency extremes but the Summits are also somewhat efficient with a 92db rating.

An audition of some tube gear with the Summits would answer some questions but unfortunately any local sources for tube gear seem to have dried up in this area.

Craig, I used a long run of single ended interconnects (26 feet long) for many years and it works OK so long as the input impedence of the amp is at least 1000 times the output impedence of the preamp. That said I went balanced because I had equipment whose manufacturers recommended balanced cabling (at the time Sonic Frontiers and Rowland). There was an improvement in lowering the tube hiss from my pre as well as the soundstage moving farther behind the plane of the speaker. I also heard tighter bass and a bit more focus on solo voice . It was not due to differences in cables since I sent my single ended cables back to be changed to balanced. I have no experience with tube amps in my system and also await the answers of those on this forum who use tube amps with ML's!

Hi Craig, While I do not have Summitts my Vantages are damn near the same when it comes to 'driving characteristics' , so the attached thread gives you a peak into what I've been up to.

http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5340


I also listened to the "Mac 275's" and the ARC 210's "baby refs" (loved them but out of my $$ range)

The Rogue M-150's have been in my system for over six weeks now, they are not going anywhere for a while !

would you consider solid state?

Craig,

While all of the amps mentioned so far have excellent reputations (I have not heard any of them personally). I would direct you to two threads comparing the BAT tube amps, the BK-55 and its big brother the BK-75SE.

See post #21 of this thread already mentioned by twitch54 http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5340&page=2

and post #65 of this thread http://www.martinloganowners.com/~tdacquis/forum/showthread.php?t=5189&page=5

Dave Matz has been looking for a new amp for his Vantages and the conclusion after auditioning the best that BAT has is that the Sanders ESL amplifier sounds noticeably better than the best BAT has to offer.

That being said the sound of the BAT BK-75SE is very good, I am sure you would be happy with it of any of the bigger amps you have mentioned so far the 24 and 50 watt amps are just not enough when driving the panels and despite that the woofers are powered. When the amp runs out of juice on the high end the low end suffers as well. This is true with the Vantages and Summits. I have to agree with risabet and kwr I think the solid state amps are just a better match with the Electrostatic panels,

Roger has a 30 day trial for his amps and includes shipping both ways, you should give him a call.

--burke

Burke said:

Craig,


Dave Matz has been looking for a new amp for his Vantages and the conclusion after auditioning the best that BAT has is that the Sanders ESL amplifier sounds noticeably better than the best BAT has to offer.

That being said the sound of the BAT BK-75SE is very good, I am sure you would be happy with it of any of the bigger amps you have mentioned so far the 24 and 50 watt amps are just not enough when driving the panels and despite that the woofers are powered. When the amp runs out of juice on the high end the low end suffers as well. This is true with the Vantages and Summits. I have to agree with risabet and kwr I think the solid state amps are just a better match with the Electrostatic panels,


--burke

Click to expand...

Actually, the VK-75SE isn't the best tube amp BAT has to offer; that would be the VK-150SE Monoblocks, which would be a more fair comparison to the Sanders amp as it's much closer to the overall output rating of the Sanders and thus would have similar headroom. I'm not bad mouthing the Sanders as I'm intrigued by it myself, but, if the time comes for me to consider replacing my BAT VK-6200 (why would I?), it will likely be with either a big brute set of tubes like the VK-150SE's or an alternate specifically bred for a stat application like Roger's wonderful amps (or possibly the Moscode's).

You've touched on this before...

Craig,
I remember participating on this Cary 805C driving Summits subject almost exactly 2 years ago Summits and 15W tube amp. In that thread, I also pointed out a thread where member Steve Daigneault uses the Cary 805C with his Vantages: Bought some Vantages. Coming from the Art Audio's 300B, I doubt that you'll be happy with the KT88, 6550, tubes. You're giving up the tonal body of the 300B, exchanging body for bass tautness. If you need more power than the Art Audio Jota, the Adagio at 60 watts per channel will be about on par (power-wise) as the Cary 805C (50 watts per channel) or the Canary Audio 339. If you want to explore more power, the Cary 211 coming in at 70 watts per channel is another option.

On another note, I've listened to your system and thought that it was top-notch already. What's changed?

Spike

Spike said:

...On another note, I've listened to your system and thought that it was top-notch already. What's changed?

Spike

Click to expand...

J-O-E-Y-I-T-I-S

Spike said:

Craig,
Coming from the Art Audio's 300B, I doubt that you'll be happy with the KT88, 6550, tubes. You're giving up the tonal body of the 300B, exchanging body for bass tautness.
Spike

Click to expand...

Spike, interesting observation. I've known for a long time that different tube types sound different, but isn't the implementation (amp design) more (or just as) important than tube type? I've heard many tube amps with the same output tube types and there are definitely differences. I guess my question is, can a tube amp using other than a 300B have the same tonal body of an amp using a 300B?

slowGEEZR said:

Spike, interesting observation. I've known for a long time that different tube types sound different, but isn't the implementation (amp design) more (or just as) important than tube type? I've heard many tube amps with the same output tube types and there are definitely differences. I guess my question is, can a tube amp using other than a 300B have the same tonal body of an amp using a 300B?

Click to expand...

In my experience that is a big maybe. The circuit topology has a lot, all?, to do with the sound and SET amps, with 300B, 2A3 or 845 sound different than similar amps using the same tubes in a PP circuit. It is IME more the topology and the tube more than anything else accounts for the sound of SET/300B amps.

slowGEEZR said:

I've known for a long time that different tube types sound different, but isn't the implementation (amp design) more (or just as) important than tube type?

Click to expand...

You're absolutely correct that the implementation needs to be considered as a whole. It's just the case that the tube types (triode, pentode, or tetrode) are considered part of the implementation due to the fact that each tube type imposes a different set of electrical requirements on the circuitry.

slowGEEZR said:

I've heard many tube amps with the same output tube types and there are definitely differences. I guess my question is, can a tube amp using other than a 300B have the same tonal body of an amp using a 300B?

Click to expand...

Theoretically, I guess a tube amplifier using a non-triode tube can be made to have the similar big tonal body as the 300B/2A3 but I have not seen it done in practice. They may come close, but not quite. If I had to guess, the designers targeting these triode tubes know very well the characteristics of these tubes and they would chose the implementation which would showcase the best virtues of these tubes (bass control is not one of the virtues here):

1. Due to the very simple triode circuitry of the tubes, the supporting circuitry is kept to the minimum in order to preserve the integrity of the original signal. That's probably the main reason one sees these triode tubes in the low-wattage, single-ended configuration most of the times.
2. The high voltage requirement of these tubes demands a very robust, stable power supply contributing tremendous impact to the resulting sound.

If you read carefully the Bought some Vantages thread, you can get some idea of the tonal differences between the different tube amplifiers using different tube types. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that the SET sound is better than other implementation. I'm merely pointing out that there are differences in the resulting sound and I just happen to be on the camp which values big tones and liquid midrange over clarity, transparency and bass-slam.

Spike

No way on the SET, power is your friend!

Especially with panels.....

Thanks risabet and Spike.

Spike said:

Craig,
I remember participating on this Cary 805C driving Summits subject almost exactly 2 years ago Summits and 15W tube amp. In that thread, I also pointed out a thread where member Steve Daigneault uses the Cary 805C with his Vantages: Bought some Vantages. Coming from the Art Audio's 300B, I doubt that you'll be happy with the KT88, 6550, tubes. You're giving up the tonal body of the 300B, exchanging body for bass tautness. If you need more power than the Art Audio Jota, the Adagio at 60 watts per channel will be about on par (power-wise) as the Cary 805C (50 watts per channel) or the Canary Audio 339. If you want to explore more power, the Cary 211 coming in at 70 watts per channel is another option.

On another note, I've listened to your system and thought that it was top-notch already. What's changed?

Spike

Click to expand...

In addition to the Art Audio Jota 300BXLS (high current version) that puts out a mere 24 watts of "SET" sound to the Summits I also have a pair of Electrocompaniets AW220 mono SS amps that I swap out on occasion with the Summits. The Jota is suprisingly good with the Summits at moderate levels. The Electrocompaniets can play louder and in a listening test with my fellow Tampa area ML friends, Sleepysurf, Rampage and Brad over at my house it was unanimous that the Electrocompaniets was the better match for the Summits especially in the bass dept.

I've recently used the Jota with a pair of 91db cone speakers and it really brings out the sweet sound of that amp. A couple of years ago I had an Art Audio Carrisa on loan and played that through the Aeons. It sounded very clear detailed great soundstage and tight bass. It is an 845 based tube SET amp but it is designed to produce only 16 watts of voltage but has a very high current output unlike most 845 SET amps. 16 watts isn't supposed to work with an electrostat speaker but these high current Art Audio amps are apparently built a little different. There is a review of this amp out there somewhere were the author tries this amp with a pair of Magnepans with good results.

I don't know if anyone else has tried this but I also plugged a Cary 300SEI into the Summits and actually not only played but also played with the sweet mellow sound that you normally get with 300b tubes. It was kinda nice and I would have like to have spent some more time with that but it was on loan a short time. If you know this amp then you know its about 15 watts. Maybe the highs would have been rolling off but I didn't really have that much time with it to listen more critically. I also plugged it into my Ascents and it could not handle that at all. The difference between the two was that the Summits was pleasurable to listen to and on the Ascents it was obviously very wrong. There are some threads and posts back when I was playing around with these lower powered amps on the Summits. I'll have to go back and read those again.

I like the "SET tube sound" and the Summits and therefore seeking a SET tube amp with enough power to drive the Summits to their potential. It's a challenge since SET amps are inherently low powered and are usually matched with efficient speakers. The Art Audio Adagio mono amps are probably the ones with the most potential since they are a serious 50 watts or so of pure class "A" SET tube power and finesse but they are sort of over my budget.

Therefore I was considering the Cary 805 or 211's. However, my recent Joeyitis affliction seems to be of the Art Audio SET variety. I could easily put together a low powered SET amp and efficient cone speaker combination but it's a challenge or very expensive to find that combination with electrostats. I think the 92 dB sensitivity of the Summits make that combination close to being possible.

My main point with all this is that I think the current output of amplifiers have a lot to with how well they can control electrostats and that the wattage rating of an amp is not really as useful of a spec as perceived. I'm also no expert and open to what others have to say on that topic.

Craig said:

My main point with all this is that I think the current output of amplifiers have a lot to with how well they can control electrostats and that the wattage rating of an amp is not really as useful of a spec as perceived. I'm also no expert and open to what others have to say on that topic.

Click to expand...

I must disagree, at least a little bit. I think the problem with SET amps in this context is more to do with the interaction between the load impedance and the output impedance, the Ohm's law interaction and its effect on both freq. response and damping factor (the speaker impedance divided by the output impedance) in a SS amp with a output impedance of .05 ohms the amp would have a damping factor of 400 into an eight ohm load. A tube amp with an output impedance of 2 ohms will have a damping factor of 4. The FR of the SS amp will not be effected by the speaker load while the tube amp will show substantial effects. As an average a PP tube amp will have an output impedance of around 1 ohm, an OTL will be around 10 to 12 ohms and an SET somewhere around 2 ohms. With the highly varying impedances of ESL panels I don't see an SET having the guts to really do them justice, particularly at higher volumes.

Mc2102

I tried this amp with the Summits. It was totally without any frquency extension at all. Dull, dull, dull.

Craig,

Any word at all regarding the 805C and the Summits?