Quote:there is a fine line between making someone want more and making them feel dissatisfied with what they already have.
I'd like to speak to this... there is a VERY fine line between making someone want more and making them feel dissatisfied with what they already have. Any time there is a new product or update for an existing product I feel lots of stress knowing this is going to be the common interpretation.
Believe it or not, updates are never planned. They are accidental discoveries that happen as a result of continual probing and wonderment.
It's important to understand I have never once updated one of our products because I wanted to make it sound better! If I thought it could sound better, I would have never released it in the first place.
Let me use the TORII as an example...
Original TORII (blue) was updated because the original design was flawed. It required output transformers that were matched out past 100KHz to work properly (it took two on each side) and there is no way to measure an output transformer accurately that high in frequency. On average I had to build and test three amps just to get one that I could sell. It wasn't worth it.
Torii MKII (black with the back lit Decware logo) solved these problems by going to a conventional transformer design, and an enlarged chassis that made it possible to improve the layout and reduce heat.
Torii MK III(white) Another few hundred amps down the road and enough was learned to further improve the amp by simplifying the ground buss which dropped the noise floor, made building it a smoother experience and made it more UPS proof by increasing the impact G load to 70G's before part leads would bend or move.
Torii MK IV(black) Was motivated by the desire to change the whole line from white (that showed scratches) to black finishes that don't scratch. Any time you make a new chassis little things are bumped around to improve spacings and accommodate any mods or features you've been wishing for like increasing the impact tolerance to 90 G's.
Of course with each revision we tried to make the sound a little better, but really the correct term is "a little faster". This is largely determined by choice of coupling caps, and since good sounding DAC's have become more affordable each year, it made it possible to increase the speed of the amps in small increments. This is of course risky because the amp can become too revealing or put another way, less forgiving risking a loss of musicality. Slightly slower is always safer.
Our original Zen amp was upgraded a year or so into the game (1999) because so many people who purchased one were putting faster caps in it and doing other mods that frankly ruined the signature of the amp... Something that took me over 3 years to perfect. So I decided if they want a modded zen amp, I'll offer a modded zen amp that is done correctly, and we did. It was called the "Select". Was it better than the original amp which we continued to sell, no. It was faster. To a guy with an expensive source and cables, it was better. To a guy with a typical mid-fi CD player it was worse.
So you see, "making someone want more" has never been the motivation for any updates. And thinking that each new model sounds so much better than the previous that you have to get one would be in error. My advise is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
The TORII has always been a very unique amplifier. It attempts to make a non-linear pentode linear without the two requirements needed to accomplish that - which are ultra-linear output transformers or negative feedback. The penalty with this is that current follows impedance and some speakers are less compatible than others. Granted it's only about 1 in 30 pair but having built a worse case scenario speaker for the TORII as a test device I am reminded every day that the amp could be better by being compatible with more speakers.
That really means that anyone owning a TORII who has speakers that the amp likes, will see little to no benefit from updating, and would be going from a well seasoned amplifier to a brand new one that has to be burned in again.
The TORII MKIV was tweaked as far as it could be meaning that there was nothing left I could do to make it sound any better. It's peaked out, as we like to say.
So what was the reason to come out with a MKIV?
The TORII has always been a little tweaky. The adjustments it has are placed there to deal with the tweaky nature of the amp relative to the speakers you paired it with. The adjustments simply make the amp more compatible with a wider range of speakers.
Having owned the ZMA for a couple years, an amp with not one adjustment to change the sound, I have noticed that I've never wanted to adjust the sound! It just sounds right all the time. Reason for this is because the ZMA is far less picky about the speakers you pair with it.
Quite by accident, which is usually the case, I discovered a way to make the TORII less picky about speakers without changing the output design of the amplifier - which is what defines it as a TORII. It's one of those things that as a designer you've been wishing you could do since the amp's inception.
To see how well the MK IV fairs in this test I currently have no adjustments of any kind on the amp and am rolling tubes to see how it behaves with each. This is as far as I've gotten with it, so no point in starting a barrage of questions about it. Let me spend some time with it to make sure it's right. I don't want a TORII MK 6!
If anyone who has received a TORII MKIV recently feels anxiety about the MKV just drop me an email and we'll see what we can work out.
Steve
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