Carlsbad
|
My review:
I've had my ZMA for about 6 months now. I bought it to replace an SE34I.5 (Rachel). I was very happy with Rachel but a friend suggested the ZMA will outperform. I'm a believer in less is more. Touch the signal as little as possible. Keep the amplifier simple. Of course Rachel does that. But the ZMA does it too and the upgraded power supply just makes it sing.
Before Rachel I had an Ayon Spark Delta--a 6c33c amp that retails at close to twice what the ZMA does. But is is way too complicated. I was hoping to recreate the 6c33c sound that my buddy has with his highly modded Almaro, but the Ayon lost most of the tube magic as it overprocessed the signal.
Before that I dipped my toes into the tube world with a Sophia Baby amp. Sophia is a great company and I'd like to hear some of their better amps. I was impressed with the Baby, used on ebay for $500, and weighing 14 lbs. It drove my 140 lb speakers much better than the behemoth solid state amps I had used before. But I found Decware.
My system is built around a pair of Tekton Encore speakers. Tekton is an underappreciated gem of a speaker. The company is run by a mad scientist (somewhat like Decware). But the leader at Tekton has made a few enemies along the way with his claims that his speakers are better than the $20,000 or even $50,000 speakers that people are putting in high end systems. Never mind that his claims may be true, it isn't going to make you any friends who are playing in that high end speaker playground. So they get bashed a lot of forums by people that have never heard them. They are all about the sound, no $5000 polished wood cabinet on top of a $2000 set of drivers. Simple painted boxes designed around the sound, not around looks. Enough about Tekton, lets just say they are very efficient, have wonderful midrange, and are a great match for a tube amp, escpecially Decware.
So after I got Rachel, and even moreso with the ZMA, I realized my digital system that I was feeding it with was not as good as I wanted. With a truly fine, resolving amplifier, weaknesses in the rest of your system are revealed. I upgraded my DAC twice, I went to a streamer. I finally understood some of the subtlties of streaming and addressed them. Now everything is sounding superb.
Almost as soon as I got the ZMA I started looking for tube upgrades. that is just my nature. But I was impressed right off the bat with the ZMA stock tubes. I will say for the first hour I thought maybe I liked Rachel better. But that was just what I was used to. After a day or two of critical listening, I listed Rachel for sale, and sold her in an hour for what I paid for her. That is how it is with Decware. High demand for a quality product. So it took me a while to research tubes and it was sounding really really good, so I wasn't in a hurry. From the beginning I was very impressed by the midrange. Vocals and Saxophone are right there in the room with me. I find myself making excuses to stay in the sweet spot. I'd be writing this review from my listening chair but I'm visiting my son this weekend and so I'm up an hour before him and dang, no quality sound system.
I tried several tubes in the input and driver locations with no improvement until I bought adapters and went to the WE396--which has been a favorite tube of mine in the Sophia Baby. I'll probably stick with those although I may try a pair of Amperex PQ which is a highly regarded and epensive tube.
In the power tube position, I thought surely there were upgrades available for the through them. I tried Gold Lion KT66s. Another flavor, not much change. I tried TS 7027A, nice. I liked them better. I tried Mullard EL34, find them a bit bland. Then I tried Tungsol 7581A, I liked those a lot and listened to them for the last several months. But all along the tube journey, I was upgrading my digital system, so sometimes it was hard to know what was sounding better, the new tubes or the new equipment.
So recently I finished my digitial upgrades and decided it was time to roll through my tube collection again. The last tube I tried was the Tungsol KT66 that was supplied with the amp, I considered this to be a "cost effective" tube that Decware could buy in quantities and supply with the amp, clearly a tube that any advanced listener would upgrade immediately so I didn't expect much from it. I put it in and sat at my computer. I use roon so I choose songs from my laptop while I'm also surfing, shopping, and researching on the internet. Several times I found myself looking up while I listened. The music (songs I was very familiar with) was jumping out at me in the room. The great midrange and wonderful highs that I had been immediately impressed with when I got the ZMA were now enhanced by the digital upgrades and Damn, it does sound fine. The TS KT66s are now my favorite tubes. In a way it makes sense since Steve did build the amp around this set of power tubes. If I can't ever find a tube I like better than the TS KT66, I'll be a happy listener. I haven't mentioned the bass. I love the midrange but I don't ignore the bass. The TS KT66 gets it just right. Not boomy, it is tight and strong. Every song is properly complimented by the perfect amount of bass.
I'm going to try a few more tubes. Moving into NOS area. I'm going to try some 807s, some sylvania 5933s, and some 6L6GCs, probably GE on the latter. I toyed with the idea of 350Bs but nobody seems to have tried them and they probably need more heater current than the ZMA is designed to provide.
In summary, the amp sounds great. I'm a modder so I've already done some mods but I'm not going to discuss them since I don't want to give the impression that the amp needs work. It is great out of the box. I'll probably keep tweeking though. And I'll keep swapping tubes in and out. To me, it isn't a destination, it's a journey but the ZMA is a wonderful place along the way and my efforts to upgrade are moving elsewhere for a while.
Decware enthusiasts can feel free to message me any questions they may have about my ZMA.
Jerry Stephenson
|
Pages: 1
ZMA First Impressions (Read 2718 times)
