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https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl AUDIO FORUMS >> General Discussion and Support >> The amplifier that started Decware was not a ZEN! https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1546487554 Message started by Steve Deckert on 01/03/19 at 03:52:34 |
Title: Re: The amplifier that started Decware was not a ZEN! Post by ScottNC on 01/03/19 at 04:17:27 It’s great to hear the beginnings of DecWare and ahhh the Lafayette Catalog. Nice post for the New Year of 2019. Best, Scott That was right around when I got my Advents, Kenwood and Pioneer TT. |
Title: Re: The amplifier that started Decware was not a ZEN! Post by Steve Deckert on 01/03/19 at 04:39:57 I know right! The Lafayette catalog... we were so blessed to live when we did and do... what a perspective. What pride building stuff like this do our kids have... there isn't even any kits for smartphones and even if there were you can't use a smartphone without paying a monthly ransom. Can you imagine how absurd it would have sounded when the salesman sold you the receiver in 1977 and said by the way you will get a monthly bill from the radio station for everything you listen you and it will know because it's tracking your every move! Boy the 70's really exploded with the advent of solid state and a couple years to iron out the kinks... the stereo gear was wonderful to look at and there were no such thing as $1000 power cords. Funny how the sound got worse over the years (smaller speakers, high speed duped cassettes, digital, etc.) despite the miraculous advancements in cable technology ; ). If you go back to the 1950's and 60's when the microphones were tube, the entire audio path was tube, and the playback and monitoring systems were tube with speakers that were huge by today's standards... the sound was spectacular. Nothing like what you hear today or even 20 years ago. You can clearly hear this difference in reel-to-reel master tapes from the different eras. The audio industry has pretended that the sound has improved with each year and better technology, but most of it actually got worse and now enough time has passed that many are losing their reference so they will simply believe it. Steve |
Title: Re: The amplifier that started Decware was not a ZEN! Post by Steve Deckert on 01/03/19 at 05:15:32 As a followup to my original post, one of the things I wanted to say but forgot to mention was that the main thing that made me like the Harmon Kardon sound was the square wave response (or so they claimed) that gave the leading edge of notes such great definition. To listen to one the drum kit sounded real, while on the other receivers the sound was smeared. It's a timing thing that has a lot to do with feedback and overall complexity in a circuit and what it does to the timing. The EICO being far simpler than the HK and with hardly any feedback was so much faster... the attack was realistic. Imaging and space was not compressed or smeared adding to the believability. The amp had spank that you just didn't hear in anything else. I'm not talking about that artificial spank of class T amps, I mean meaty, dense, juicy sound that can snap like a whip making everything else sound fuzzy, slow, like diarrhea, smeared, vailed and pitiful. Steve |
Title: Re: The amplifier that started Decware was not a ZEN! Post by Lon on 01/03/19 at 08:27:39 Very interesting Steve. I had an EICO tubed integrated from 1959 before I had my Zen amp #27 (Eric has it now) and though it began developing issues near the end, it was a very nice sounding machine that it took a Zen to top in my system. And though something else, I grew up with my Dad's Dynaco system of a similar vintage (a parishioner gave it to him in '62, he was an electrical engineer and modified it) consisting of a tuner, preamp and amp with an AR turntable and EV speakers. The tube sound of that period was the reference built into me and what led me back to tubes in the early 'nineties and to Decware. |
Title: Re: The amplifier that started Decware was not a ZEN! Post by Lonely Raven on 01/03/19 at 14:24:23 I have yet to repair that EICO amp, Lon. Still sitting on a shelf with parts I felt needed replacing (caps, tubes, a couple pots). I was hoping to find time over Xmas to break it out, but with my parents visiting I put all projects on pause. I love this Story, Steve. It's fun to look back at the decision tree that leads us to where we are today. I often think about what got me into guitar, which got me deeper into audio, which got me searching a true zero negative feedback tube amp I could afford...which lead me to Decware; back in '97, receiving my amp in '98. Listening to that original Zen amp in your house, on those really anal two way speakers, in a heavily diffused room, on a $200 Denon CD player that you had to help push the tray back in to load a disc(LOL)....that was transformitive for me. So was listening to the OTL 5 or 6 years ago when I came back into the fold after getting my little Zen amp tuned up. I have to agree with you, sometimes it seems like we're getting nudged. |
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