i posted earlier about speakers; I'm going with the omega super alnicos (Louis at omega recommended, as did several of you.)

My question now is: what's the best pre-amp for my system?

I have a SE84UFO2.1, a merason mkII dac, a lumin streamer and rel s812 subs.

Thanks.

Donnie- Here is a perfect driver for your next project.  You could inquire about special ordering them in red too!  

Sent you an email

You may be right. Why one would bother to pick a subject that they really don't have a deep interest in to argue, I'll not know. . . .

Quote:


My feeling is they don't really care about "hearing." They get pleasure from the argument, not the listening.

If anyone has one of these amps that they would like to part with, please let me know. My email is: desperado915@yahoo.com

Thank you,

Mark

I find it so hard to understand those who really "don't hear" differences in the things that we find so much pleasure in differentiating and enjoying.

Along these lines I was thinking how frustrating it would be to have a solid state amplifier that locked one into a specific "character" of sound and not be able to roll a tube and tailor the sound that way. After nearly four decades of having my own tube equipment (after growing up with my Dad's) I just feel I would be unable to be satisfied with even the very best solid state amplification. I'd have to have a ZROCK3 in front of it at least! I think I'd rather have the less transparent but classic sounding EICO HF-81 integrated I used to have rather than a modern solid state amp that gets lots of good press.

If this be delusion. . . so be it. . . there's lots of delusion in this modern world, I'll choose this one. I am getting sound from my system today that both inspires and captivates me. I can ask for little more.

Congrats Donnie! I can imagine the relief and pride when the sound flowed out. I bet when the second amp is on and monoblocks are in play you'll be impressed!

Yes, that would be more "irritating" . . . I don't switch inputs often at all, so I'm not inconvenienced with frequent shutting down and warming up, etc.

I didn't start early on my ACA amps today, as I had a lunch engagement with several of the folks I used to work with. Lies were swapped, tails of what insolvable problems we had solved, and Gyro's were eaten.

When I finally got home it was blast furnace hot on my garage, so I took a nap while music played through my oak speakers.
After about 10 minutes I realized that it was a fools errand to try to relax when I had the Sword of Damocles over my head with the amps needing to be finished.
It was nice and cool in my stereo room, so I brought the job into my downstairs lair.
I dragged my card table and all of my tools of destruction inside and set up right here.

After I got started I noticed that I quit about a half hour early yesterday, there was only termination of a couple of wires and everything was done.

Then there was the big step to take, plugging it in to see where all of the magic smoke came out.
Not a whiff of anything came out, but I knew it was on because it being a class A amp, meant that it was warming up to a more than a slightly tepid temperature.

I then got out my handy Multi-Meter to check the voltage bias, it needed to be 12V but was closer to 9V. I turned the little potentiometer until I got it to 12V and started hooking up cables to it. When I pushed play, sound came out of both channels.
I was stunned that something that I had put together from parts and pieces actually worked!

So how does it sound?
Pretty good, better than my class D Ampapa amp, not as good as my Torii nor my Angela-Gilbert. I would say it is in the same place as my ZKIT 60, not too shabby.

So if my wife doesn't have overriding orders for me tomorrow my gut feeling is that I would be able to knock the second amp out in a few hours.
I then will be able to hook them up strapped into mono as my master plan has been from the start.

For whatever reason I have been writing quite a bit more flowery the last week or two.
Probably because I've been reading a lot of P.J. O'Rourke and Hunter Thompson the last few months.