Lon, I'm waffling between doing the ZMA mod second (next year) and get the SE84UFO3/25th Mono-blocks this Fall?!

Decisions ~ decisions!  

Ok RLB, let me try to simplify things here for you.  The statement of concern can clearly be interpreted two ways and it has nothing to do with a misstatement on Steve's part.  It is merely language semantics.  

Two Ways of Interpretation:
1) It was stated to be interpreted as you have.
2) Or, it was stated to mean that the driver must go down to NO LESS than 40Hz but it can go DOWN MORE than 40Hz which could be 30Hz, 25Hz, 22Hz, etc. and be fine. The point I am trying to make is DOWN can mean two things in this statement, and both can be CORRECT.  First off DOWN can refer to the overall amount of drop in frequency rather than the frequency value itself.  In other words the driver has to have the ability to drop low in frequency, where it is dropping to no less than 40Hz but can drop lower (more) to 30Hz, etc.  

It is the English language and it is quite common for statements to have multiple interpretations.  How do you think lawyers rack up billable hours?   All matters of interpretation.  

If you were offended by my statement, that is on you.  There was no disrespect intended.  Please remember, this is a public forum.  If feedback is not desired, there is a feature called a PM ("Private Message") which means you can ask questions privately, directly to "The Man" and not be bothered by anyone offering feedback.  As long as you post publicly, you will have to accept the fact that other people may, and often do, reply.  And for the most part, users get that, and are perfectly OK with it - as they should be.  

A poorly phrased statement for sure... plus I actually was thinking 30 Hz when I wrote 40. My concern is that it would be all too easy to have an open baffle speaker that only went down to 80Hz and have an open baffle subwoofer that barely hits 50Hz and hear a full sound, but the bottom octave would still be missing.  Remember the context of this was to supplement the ZOB with an open baffle style sub, and this came just after my description of how the speakers sounded with subs that go down to 22 Hz.

The reason I was musing about the bass in the first place is because it is rare for most people to get to hear a Zen Triode Amplifier on speakers that go down to 22 Hz and in a room that is designed to handle those low frequencies.  This is when you really can appreciate the bass performance of these 2 watt amplifiers.  I have enjoyed it for years, but now after hearing it on the new Anniversary amps it took things to a new level, a level I would love for the rest of you to hear.  You won't hear it if the sub only goes down to 40Hz.


Steve

Hear, hear Jeff.

Archie, I wish, .....my budget is gummed up till the Fall. I will need to muddle through with my Shunyata/ZDSD, ZMA, Kimber Select & Adagio's.  

I might wait and visit Decware in January or February (in between a snow storm window, colds no bother).

UPDATE:  In the ongoing saga of the Anniversary amp I am making an effort to document pertinent things and tonight I am listening to the Anniversary amp by not listening to it.  That means I am listening to something else and comparing that to my new reference which has become the UFO25's.  Hearing what is missing in one amp is a great way to hear what is not missing in another.  I have ruined myself!  Haha... I've always said ignorance is bliss in this hobby and the UFO25 raised the bar farther even than I realized.  I am discovering just how far by comparing it with other amplifiers in my circle.

There is a disturbing aspect to it, but boy are good things going to come out of it, you can be sure of that!

Steve

Road trip to the mother ship!

...by appointment.
(When Steve has the enhancement done to his satisfaction/ZMA).

UFO25th     Single
UFO25th     Strapped Pair
UFO3/25th  Mono's
ZMA           Enhanced
CSP3/25th
DNA2's!

........bring Credit Card    8-)


Pack and carry:

(Modified) Acoustic Zen Adagio's
ZMA (in Pelican case~leaving Amp with Steve if I'm doing the enhancement/ship back)
Kimber KS6063 Speaker Cable
Kimber KS1030 IC
My additional KS1030 IC (for CSP3/25th audition)
Sony transport
Illuminati D-60
Shunyata digital p-cord for his ZDSD on tap
XLO p-cord I use to ZMA
My favorite full tube compliment(s).

Like the Torii Mk III and Mk IV the Mini-Torii uses OA3 and OC2 voltage regulation tubes to clean the power of the output and input tubes, but it does not have the further power supply upgrades/bypasses that are incorporated in the 25th Anniversary changes made to models so far.

Today I let go of the prototype Anniversary amp (the red one) to my friend Joe from Arkansa who will probably post some pics of it when he gets it all set up.

The reason I mention this, is because he brought his own interconnects and speaker wires so he could see how they stack up against the DSR interconnects and the ZSTYX speaker cables. What it taught him and reminded me is that if you're going to own an Anniversary amp, you may as well plan on owning the cables too, because anything less is going to be a travesty.  

It was actually scary how bad one of the pair of interconnects tanked the sound.  Resolution gone.  Bass bloated and overly heavy.  No idea how it imaged, ran out of the room ; )

Steve

Already there and I haven’t got my UFO25, yet!  Here’s why...

Sold and delivered my SE84UFO2, which by the way I absolutely loved, to a gent who stated “you’re spending that much per watt on the A-Amp???” Why?  Reply “I’m ruined!”  

Now after your last comment and his I got to thinking (and yes it did hurt).  What if all one had to do was throw money at the A-Amp to give it more watts to get the exact same sound?

Say one wanted 20 watts, simply throw $1,650.00 x 20 = $33,000.00 and you have a 20 watt amp that sounds exactly like the UFO25. So let’s take this a step further and say one wanted 40 watts, once again throw $1,650.00 x 40 = $66,000.00, OR, if one went the distance and wanted 100 watts that sounded exactly like the UFO25, once again... $1,650.00 x 100 = $165,000.00

Now I realize that things don’t work that way, BUT it does put an interesting perspective on on low power high efficiency and the applicable term, RUINED (add “Abslutely” to that).

Even more impressive, if I'm reading the list correctly, there are 30. It seems some folks wanted two.

Guess I waited too long to order my regular UFO.

Hey Scott in mich....not too late. I'd say wait time approx 8 weeks. Now as good a time as any! Or, wait for a used to come up on the forums? Either works.

Hi Acetone,

Eight weeks would be great. I was thinking three to four months. I pulled the trigger on it Sunday.

UPDATE: 1st production model to ship out the door is presently built, QC'd and in the final listening evaluation.  

Currently it is playing some Donald Fagen, one of my all time favorites.  The sound is so correct.  It's really weird how easy it is to listen to.  Only a couple hours old and it already sounds better than all of its brothers and sisters...  these amps really are worth $1650 a watt.

I was going to post some pictures, but the bureaucratic nature of present day technology can't seem to get out of it's own way as if time grew on trees and none of us have anything else to firkin do...  when I can get my phone to talk to the computer at a usable speed I'll let you know.

Steve

"Next I'm going to see what I can hear between the clear glass and the white glass.  I also found a juicy black glass resistor that I've yet to hear.  I'm sure they'll all be in the same league being so similarly built, but we have to be sure."

Any feedback on the juicy black glass resistor yet, Steve?

/M.

I've never been too impressed by people who keep bragging about their precious little things, knowing that such behaviour is often triggered by a chronic need to get confirmation/recognition.

I guess my reply to such comment would simply be "Power is nothing without control", and then perhaps add (as appropriate) "I like you. You remind me when I was young and stupid....."

On a more serious note, I think it would be opportune to explain to such a person that the Decware product line is more than an interesting alternative to the audiophile brands you find when going mainstream. It shows what you can actually find if you are just prepared to step out of your comfort zone, think out of the box and not let you be easily impressed and misled by fancy marketing/sales jargons and exclusive branding so often typical of the mainstream products with their seemingly unlimited financial resources. The Decware signature is a wake-up call for the more conservative ones among us who so far have blindly accepted to act as guinea pigs for the corporate giants… and often at great cost.....

Popping in to check up on the forums - yep, they are still here.  :)

Nice to see the 25th is shipping! I finally unplugged my Zen for the first time since November and put my ZMA in with 7027a. It sounds good, but man, even my watered down 25th is just so much more.

I'm still looking forward to the ZMA Enhanced - I can drop mine off anytime you want to play around with ideas.  :)

Congrats on your 25th!! Beautiful...

I can imagine... the video sounds amazing! Nice.

You may not have noticed, but it's already early July! Hope it ships soon. Been my experience that from this point on you won't have much longer to wait!

LOL

Congrats! Can't wait to hear what you think of the amp with the super 3 ho xrs.

The SE84UFO25 owner's manual is ready:

https://www.decware.com/newsite/SE84UFO25manual.pdf



-Steve

Oh my, I just took a peek at the manual...no time to read it now but lots of useful info for all decware Amp owners.  I'll read it after I get back from work. Mark.

Typically a pair of 12 or 15 inch drivers that are of an efficiency that is equal to or greater than your main speaker and are of an impedance that is equal to or higher than your main speaker.  Placed into an open baffle, a sealed or ported box or in some cases a folded horn depending on which would be the best match for the room and existing speakers.

Steve

UPDATE 8/2/2018

I have been taking these amps into the listening room and spending some time with them after I've finished the QC process, and still can't tell you for sure if the Copper Foil VCAPs or the Copper Foil Jupiter caps are actually better.

So far I have Quality Controlled 16 of these anniversary amps (with many more to go) and am thrilled at the consistency.  It's rock solid. Just like all of our stuff, but you know in the back of my mind, since this is SO good there is always that thought what if it's a fluke and not every amp sounds that way!!! For example, when I did the original blue Zen TORII by series-wiring two single-ended air-gapped transformers together to create a high-loss push-pull transformer... Man that sounded good. Problem was only 1 in 3 or 4 amps actually even worked, so we would have to build the amplifiers and then play musical transformers for in some cases weeks until we found a match that would not become unstable at high frequencies.

Anyway when crap like that happens you gain an understanding that just because something works or sounds incredible once or even four times in a row it's no guarantee it will sound that way a hundred times in a row. I have however every confidence with this amp in particular That each one will sound identical.  With it's 25 year history of perfect stability into everything from no connection to a dead short and even it's ability to drive electrostatic interfaces which simply torment most amplifiers, even with this unreal resolution, if anything it is making it easy to hear how identical each amp is... more so than normal.

Anyway back to the caps, I do see that after 8 hours of playing, the Copper Foil beeswax caps sound completely burned-in and always strike me a lot sooner than the VCAPS. That said, when the cool back to room temperature they will go back to their normal un burned-in sound until they actually do burn-in. The beauty of the Jupiter Copper Foils used in the Decware amps is that even during the burn-in process of several hundred hours, you can hear the caps as if they were burned-in by simply giving the amplifier about a 4 or 5 hour head start playing music before you start your listening session.

The Copper VCAPS in their defense once they do burn-in sound more present, a touch more forward even perhaps more intimate. Also the dynamics are even more impressive and the overall gain of the amp is slightly higher.

So after listening to 16 of these 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifiers I realize another thing about them that I have not mentioned before. It is called Logarithmic Fidelity. This is when good recordings explode into the room as if you had ten times the power you actually do.  So when going from a recording that is molested from the start to a great recording on a normal amplifier, there is a noticeable difference.  On a good amplifier, there is an appreciable difference.  On a great amplifier there is a large difference.  On an incredible amplifier there is a giant difference.  It's a logarithmic amount of difference.

Also important to note is that this is all digital recordings I'm making this observation on.  The power of the amplifier seems to literally follow the logarithmic quality of the recording.  I could pick dozens of songs that sound like the amp is distorting badly and broken, making you certain there is only about a watt or two at most and making you feel like you need way more.  THEN the good recordings come in and suddenly it sounds like you have literally 10 or 15 watts, more than you need for sure, and wow is it powerful sounding.  

Logarithmic Fidelity, driven by speed, transparency, simplicity and quality.