Lamm owners- still in love with your amps/preamps?

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I am new to the Lamm brand and own the LL2.1 Deluxe phono, the LL1 Signature preamp, and the original ML2 amps. They are a very successful combination and match, but one needs appropriate speakers. Mine are 105dB/16 ohm corner horns. I did briefly borrow the Lamm M1.1 for my Magico speakers and that too was an excellent combination.

I find Lamm electronics to sound tonally neutral, with great resolution and very little or no coloration. They are the heart of my new system and I now understand why these components are so highly revered. They simply sound right, and I would say "natural".
Totally agree Peter. I’ve owned Lamm now for about 15 -16 years and I’ve said many times here that I’ll be buried with mine. I’m a tube lover and appreciate tube life. If there’s a downside , at some point you’ll have a channel out and you go through the process of deciding which tube blew. With my ML3’s it is almost always a 6N30P Did you get extra sets of tubes for your preamp and amp
 
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PeterA

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Totally agree Peter. I’ve owned Lamm now for about 15 -16 years and I’ve said many times here that I’ll be buried with mine. I’m a tube lover and appreciate tube life. If there’s a downside , at some point you’ll have a channel out and you go through the process of deciding which tube blew. With my ML3’s it is almost always a 6N30P Did you get extra sets of tubes for your preamp and amp

Steve, David supplied me with matching sets of replacement tubes for all three components. I am new to tubes so I have learned how to check the bias on the ML2 amplifiers. I have not had to change any tubes yet but I am sure if I have any questions when the time comes that I will be able to ask David about it.
 

microstrip

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Totally agree Peter. I’ve owned Lamm now for about 15 -16 years and I’ve said many times here that I’ll be buried with mine. I’m a tube lover and appreciate tube life. If there’s a downside , at some point you’ll have a channel out and you go through the process of deciding which tube blew. With my ML3’s it is almost always a 6N30P Did you get extra sets of tubes for your preamp and amp

Although I got spare matched sets of tubes from Lamm, my ML3's had only a few hundred hours of use in my system and never had problems. But as I use a lot of 6N30p tubes in my equipment and the tube is known for giving trouble I built a jig to measure them and take them out for checking. Tubes do not blow suddenly - they usually drift to a point where they blow - usually because the triodes inside a tube become unbalanced. Since I started taking them out of service when they become suspicious I never had a blown tube.

IMHO a tube tester should be mandatory to tube equipment users, particularly as Lamm quotes tube life in years of possession, not hours of service of tubes.
 

strapper211

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Aug 6, 2013
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Hi,
As for what kind of speaker works well with the ML3s,You need between 92-102 db eff. and a impedence
that wont drop below 3.6 ohms at any point.
I use the Avalon saga"s witch are 92 db and min. 3.8 ohms and they barely work.I just love the
speakers so much and put up with the little lack of reserve in the amp.
The 6N30Ps are a horror,they give out almost the same amount of hours each time.
I tried to find a nice pair of matched DRs but I can't.

Robert
 

christoph

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Hi,
As for what kind of speaker works well with the ML3s,You need between 92-102 db eff. and a impedence
that wont drop below 3.6 ohms at any point.
I use the Avalon saga"s witch are 92 db and min. 3.8 ohms and they barely work.I just love the
speakers so much and put up with the little lack of reserve in the amp.
The 6N30Ps are a horror,they give out almost the same amount of hours each time.
I tried to find a nice pair of matched DRs but I can't.

Robert
Holla, the Sagas are proper beasts :eek:

@microstrip
Price wise, the Sagas and your XLF's should be in a similar range and the Sagas are also quite tall to give you your beloved Grandeur.
Maybe you should check the Sagas out and eventually you could finally put your ML3's to good use :D
 

bonzo75

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Holla, the Sagas are proper beasts :eek:

@microstrip
Price wise, the Sagas and your XLF's should be in a similar range and the Sagas are also quite tall to give you your beloved Grandeur.
Maybe you should check the Sagas out and eventually you could finally put your ML3's to good use :D

Even the Avalon compass are much superior to XLF
 

morricab

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Apr 25, 2014
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Hi,
As for what kind of speaker works well with the ML3s,You need between 92-102 db eff. and a impedence
that wont drop below 3.6 ohms at any point.
I use the Avalon saga"s witch are 92 db and min. 3.8 ohms and they barely work.I just love the
speakers so much and put up with the little lack of reserve in the amp.
The 6N30Ps are a horror,they give out almost the same amount of hours each time.
I tried to find a nice pair of matched DRs but I can't.

Robert
Sounds like Lamm drives them quite hard. In my DAC they seem to quite robust...
 

microstrip

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May 30, 2010
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microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
20,806
4,698
2,790
Portugal
Hi,
As for what kind of speaker works well with the ML3s,You need between 92-102 db eff. and a impedence
that wont drop below 3.6 ohms at any point.
I use the Avalon saga"s witch are 92 db and min. 3.8 ohms and they barely work.I just love the
speakers so much and put up with the little lack of reserve in the amp.
The 6N30Ps are a horror,they give out almost the same amount of hours each time.
I tried to find a nice pair of matched DRs but I can't.

Robert

Thanks Robert. IMHO and experience less than around 6-7 ohm minimum or real high efficiency is a not a significantly different choice. We can't forget the ML3 measure 2.9–3.9 ohms output impedance at 8 ohm. The XLF can work with the ML3 - but as I also own the VTL Siegfried II and I know what I am missing.

Still waiting for factual recommendations that can be of real use, not just more than X dB and more than Y ohm.
 
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microstrip

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Holla, the Sagas are proper beasts :eek:

@microstrip
Price wise, the Sagas and your XLF's should be in a similar range and the Sagas are also quite tall to give you your beloved Grandeur.
Maybe you should check the Sagas out and eventually you could finally put your ML3's to good use :D
Even Robert considers that they barely work. Probably the best use of the ML3 is selling them, unfortunately no one seems to want it. Many lovers, but not love enough for the big step ... :oops:
 
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microstrip

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Perhaps speaker companies will start to design speakers that are more efficient and easier to drive. Were that to happen, I think it would be good for the industry.
Hard to believe that it will happen. The highend speaker industry must coexist with solid state designs, that pushes towards low impedance speakers.
 

PeterA

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Hard to believe that it will happen. The highend speaker industry must coexist with solid state designs, that pushes towards low impedance speakers.

D’Agostino and boulder perhaps, but people like the low power options from Pass Labs and it is not necessary for all speaker companies to change just a few. We do have JBL and FYNE and others. Magico efficiency is going up over time a bit.

i’m just saying it would be nice to see and the companies could form new relationships with amplification companies.
 
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morricab

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Hard to believe that it will happen. The highend speaker industry must coexist with solid state designs, that pushes towards low impedance speakers.
That is a bit of a chicken and egg argument. I bet if speaker designers went “en masse” to high efficiency designs that amp designers would “co-evolve” to amps that are better suited to them.
This is essentially what happened when the transistor was introduced. Amp designers loved it because it finally allowed for cheap watts. Speakers then evolved to respond to that.
 
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tima

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That is a bit of a chicken and egg argument. I bet if speaker designers went “en masse” to high efficiency designs that amp designers would “co-evolve” to amps that are better suited to them.
This is essentially what happened when the transistor was introduced. Amp designers loved it because it finally allowed for cheap watts. Speakers then evolved to respond to that.

Some might argue that driving out high efficiency speakers was the greatest boneheaded move ever made by high-end amp designers. On the other wing, just because watts are plentiful doesn't mean a speaker must be hard to drive. This is where the high-end audio industry is screwed-up.
 

morricab

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Some might argue that driving out high efficiency speakers was the greatest boneheaded move ever made by high-end amp designers. On the other wing, just because watts are plentiful doesn't mean a speaker must be hard to drive. This is where the high-end audio industry is screwed-up.
Of course it also drove the domestic desire to have more room friendly speakers...the watts allowed small, inefficient speakers that fit nicely in the room...thus the WAF went up up up but the sound quality went down down down.
 
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microstrip

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That is a bit of a chicken and egg argument. I bet if speaker designers went “en masse” to high efficiency designs that amp designers would “co-evolve” to amps that are better suited to them.
This is essentially what happened when the transistor was introduced. Amp designers loved it because it finally allowed for cheap watts. Speakers then evolved to respond to that.

Not chicken and egg. IMHO you are betting on the improbable. But anyway you are strengthening my argument - speakers follow amplifier trends. IMHO the trend in amplifiers will go towards higher electrical efficiency - we will be happy if class A is not banned :oops: - with better sound quality.

And sorry, as long as we read here it seems there is little to improve in small power amplifiers. The "best" seem to be the old classics. On the contrary, high power have been improving a lot.

Higher efficiency full range speakers always means large or cumbersome speakers. All dealers I know told me that pandemics created a trend towards smaller speakers - people are staying at home, they want to use this time to decor and re-arrange rooms. It is not hard to guess that one of the first suggestions is removing those big monsters from the living room! :)
 

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