Steve Deckert
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I’m back! (This is what the SE84UFO25 said to me today after months of isolation)
After a long absence posting about the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier, and the Zen Master Series Loudspeakers for that matter, tonight I brought both together for the first time in what seems like months.
I have been listening to other stuff all summer, including a lot of time outside the sweet spot listening to Tiny Radials while I work.
I like to move in waves like this, where I focus on something for a period of time and then go back to where I was before and see if the before experience changes any.
So it started rather by accident, as is usually the case.
An SE84UFO25 came in for repair, with the symptom that it hummed and could be heard in the listening chair on efficient speakers…
I tubed it up and put it on the QC bench to measure the noise and hum. As I kinda expected, it was well within spec.
So just to be absolutely certain I listened to it in my LCD2 planar headphones calibrated to simulate 94dB speakers with your ear 1 inch away. No hum.
Then I used my ZMF Eikons, calibrated to simulate a 110dB speaker which is the absolute worse case scenerio. No hum issues.
Then I took it in my listening room and hooked it to my Zen Master Series baffles which are 100dB. Silent. OK, well, customer isn’t going to like hearing that… may as well listen to it for awhile and see how it sounds.
This is where the trouble began… I say that jokingly because the sound was SO INCREDIBLY LUCID that I was hopelessly distracted to the point where I couldn’t focus on work.
Then I remembered this particular amplifier had VCAPs in it, and I believe my personal one has the Jupiter Beeswax, so then I panicked…
Because enough time has passed, or perhaps the planetary alignment, but holy crap the sound is so good, it’s like the sound you fantasied about in the stereo of your dreams. Or maybe it’s the VCAPS, holy crap how did I miss this! I just don’t remember it sounding this good!
OK, REASON…. Let’s put my amp in that has the Jupiters and just see if it the caps…
Well, 30 minutes later… no it’s not the caps.
It’s just this magical amplifier paired with these speakers that just gives me goosebumps and has me shaking my head so much my neck popped!
God, I wish everyone who was reading this could hear what I am hearing right now! It’s just so right on so many levels, you know all the typical ones, and then a whole plethora of deeper ones.
If nothing else comes from this pandemic, at least we all get to spend more time listening to music, and for me it like a gift from heaven when it happens, which is often. I say it that way because only yesterday everything sounded like crap to me. It was one of those days… will never know if it really did sound like crap or if it was in my head.
I guess that is what blows my mind and provoked this post… the giant contrast between days like yesterday and then nights like tonight, and btw, I heard this one coming as it snuck up on my day starting around 1:00 P.M. It’s now around 8:00. Also an interesting side note, my work related stress level continued to climb from about 1:30 to 4:30 and this is actually when I noticed the lucidity begin to develop in the sound.
I think the lesson here is that we have an amplifier that has reached a level so high that it makes you feel like you’re hearing it for the first time every time you listen to it. And no-one has listened to it more than I have, so what can I say. Consider getting one before the prices go up from the trickle down effect of this pandemic on our supply chains.[/color]
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