ying and yang--Lamm ML3 and darTZeel 458

DaveyF said:

Can anyone think of an inherently bright tube amp..or tube preamp for that matter?

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spiritofmusic said:

I turned down the chance to buy Nat Audio SETs in 2013, feeling them to be too full blooded tonally, with what SEEMED a reticent treble. I went down the Audion SETs 845 route instead, initially preferring their “lighter” presentation.
But my thoughts were never far from the NATs, and I took the plunge w them in 2015.
And haven’t regretted the decision for a moment.
And living w them has shown me that the centre of gravity tonally may appear to have been lower than I was used to, but this was just the effect of their fully fleshed our presentation, and indeed there is no lack of treble info, it’s just not at the expense of the mids.

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ddk said:

Don't want to go there in this thread, so many that sound very hifi with the worst possible mass market solid state characteristics.

david

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gian60 said:

Congrats dear Mike

You will enjoy a lot.
I have a room that is around 80 sqm,my speaker is 97 db at 8 ohm and when i had before Kondo Souga,2A3 parallel single end with 8 watt,the power was enough for 80 % music i listen,
so yuo will not have power problems

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Steve Williams said:

Vlad suplies carbon plate GM-70 tubes and they are excellent UNTIL you hear the copper plate GM-70 which IMO are in a league of their own. They are not cheap and difficult to find matched sets. When I bought the amp from him he had IIRC 6 pair of perfectly matched copper plate GM-70's. IIRC Vlad has a pair, I have a pair and David has a pair. There is another member here who also uses a pair. They are not inexpensive but worth every penny as they are IMO so much more natural sounding

The only tube which needs frequent replacement is the 6N30P quad set as they should be replaced every 18 months. The other tubes last 10,000 hours

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DaveyF said:

No surprise whatsoever. If you ask ARC what tubes they recommend, they are going to tell you the stock Sovteks.
From their perspective, sourcing and listening to various 6h30’s makes no sense. Sovteks are fairly reliable, easy to source and fairly consistent.

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Mike Lavigne said:

ok. been listening for the last 2-3 hours to the ML3's......best 'hard' decision I ever made. but still work to do......

to start off with, had a crackling tube in one channel, went through replacing first the -4- 6N30P's, then the GM 70, and finally the 12ax7 which it seems was the culprit. so one channel has all the new set I got as back ups. i'll go back and re-insert the original 6N30P's and GM 70 to see if it was just the 12ax7 so my 'new' set is kept fresh for when they are needed.....like tonight. now I have a good excuse to splurge for that NOS Telefunken replacement set. now 3 hours in no more crackles. fingers crossed.

thank you David for the hand holding, and giving me some answers and clear steps to take. a learning process. (I think David is more excited for me having these amps than I am, and I am really stoked.)

and, of course, there is some noise (hum, tube rush, or whatever) when the music is not playing. I messed around with things and lowered it somewhat, but for the first night with a new tube amp it's par for the course and what I would have expected. could be a number of things and the dart 458's set the bar impossibly high in that area and no tube amp is going to equal that. but I know we can do better, although there is no musical consequence I can hear. so that's the bad stuff. pleasantly; it was very easy to change the cables from the darts to the ML3. I thought it might take 20 minutes. it took 5-6 minutes. so in the time either amp drains their power supplies I can switch the cables. bodes well for group sessions. it won't be anything to stress over. and a good little work out.

the sound is heavenly. and the synergy between my system and the ML3's is about perfect. the bass is absolutely coherent, the top end is extended and everything else is astonishing. the ML3's are total space machines, and have lots of weight and power down low. i'd say there is more 'apparent weight' to the ML3's than the darts......until the ML3 reach the limits of their performance envelope.....at which point the darts are just getting going and soar without limits.

in some ways the total lack of any sort of dynamic limitation to my room is frustrating with the ML3's since the room supports however far you want to push things, but the ML3's can only go so far. but that limit is quite high, but there definitely is one in my particular system. it's almost 1 am on a work night, and i'm still listening. i'm awestruck. the ML3's do every kind of music, right now i'm listening to Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and it's all there. yes; the throttle is a bit more conservative than I might consider with the darts......but there is no lessening of energy i'm hearing. all the space is there. and there is an added flow and 'suspension of disbelief' to the music. it's more dimensional and compelling. the view into the inner musical truth and emotional content is addicting.

these are first impressions in the honeymoon context of a new toy. we need a few back and forth's between the two amplifiers and a bit of time and perspective to really get a feel for how this will be. right now i'm under the spell.

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morricab said:

Yes, and they sound like crap compared to NOS ones (which are very hard to find now). I heard this once in a BAT demo. However, I actually found that NOS 6N6P sounded MUCH better than the stock Sovteks in my Ayon Crossfire III. It was no contest as it turned the amp from sounding a bit solid state(ish) to really opening up and gaining dimensionality and finesse and a better tonal balance.

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morricab said:

Ah, so you did tube roll the GM70 with a different brand/type?

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morricab said:

Agreed, most tube amps are no better than most SS amps...all unnatural sounding but usually in different ways. I would go so far as to say that only SET has the potential to get closest to what our ear/brain considers natural...I know that rubs a lot (most) owners of other technologies the wrong way but that is the way I hear it and what the psychoacoustics suggests as well. I suspect the Darts will get less and less usage over time...

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microstrip said:

Morricab,

I disagree with such name calling of standard 6h30 tubes, at less with ARC equipment. Many years ago I have tried 6H30 (sovtek) and 6H30DR (NOS) in the ARC REF5 and CD8. They sounded similar, a slight preference for the DR, and IMHO the difference is hyped - it was much less than changing a power cord or an interconnect cable. And probably sometimes people compare them with eBay or similarly sourced tubes ...

The 6H30's need burn-in - during the first 50-100 hours they have noise in the very low frequencies, that is not heard as listenable noise but significantly affects subjective sound quality.

Most of the differences people listen when changing tubes is due to different trans-conductance in the new tubes, that affects gain. They are not listening at the same acoustic level when comparing them without volume compensation. When measuring the 6H30DR I found that they had a 20% higher trans-conductance, and were much closely matched than standard tubes - a characteristic that is fundamental for example for the Lamm LL1, that uses 8 triodes in parallel. Manufacturers that sell selected tubes at higher prices usually take care of these aspects.

Although I am a firm believer in audiophile "magic", there is still a lot that can be explained with a tube analyzer and an audio spectrometer.

As a general comment, I fail to understand how people can take decisions in short time A/B tube "shootouts" - tubes need a significant warm-up time after being powered, even if the equipment is warm. Surely IMHO, YMMV.

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gian60 said:

@morricab

After 38 years with top tube i am very very happy with my CH
In 1978 i listen music with Hal amp design,pre and amp The Battle

Could be you was too young to listen music

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Steve Williams said:

well if you consider that I bought it as it was recommended by Vlad then the answer is yes.

I guess you misunderstood. The ML3 comes stock with carbon plate GM 70 but Vlad had an extra 6 sets of perfectly matched GM 70 copper plate which was available to anyone. He uses a set, as do I and David and a few others. To me Vlad was offering either with the ML3. I bought both. If I had only bought the copper plate does that count as tube rolling..

You can buy GM 70 copper plate but none as good as the 6 pair Vlad had at the onset

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morricab said:

Ok, but I consider going from "stock" carbon plates to copper plates tube rolling. How do you know that you cannot find ones as good or better than what Vlad had if you don't buy some off the open market to compare? I admit it is unnecessary other than idle curiosity but still, I have learned not to take manufacturers at face value...no matter how talented or big their reputation is.

For example, I like a lot of the writings and philosophy espoused by Nelson Pass but to be honest, his gear always fails to impress me. Now, I haven't heard a FirstWatt, which is closest in philosophy to a simple, well executed SET in some cases, but his normal Pass stuff always leaves me wondering what all the fuss is about. IMO, his main gear doesn't walk the walk of his talk.

For Lamm, I have been both very impressed and occasionally less so. With the Lamm ML2 (and its successors) i was very impressed...also the ML1.1 for a push/pull amp is superb. I am surprised that more is not made of the ML1.1 with it's honest 80 watts or so of power and really nice tonality...I would put it up against the Jadis amps any day of the week (and Jadis is one of the few PP tube amps I really think sound ok). However, I do not find the hybrids at the same exalted level...not sure what it is but not as natural and easy flowing. I haven't heard the ML3 yet but I am sure it is right up my alley in terms of the SQ. Would love to hear them one day.

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SuperDave said:

Mike,
Congrats on the new gear! I like the idea of having options to but need a bigger room first. I can't explain why but I also had a hum when I connected the Nagra HD amps and it got a little better when I upgraded the from the stock power cords to Transparent XL and virtually went away after I grounded everything with the Elite. Are you connecting the ML3 to the Elite? Looks like you have a great place to listen!

Dave

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morricab said:

First, Victor Komenkho felt it was important enough to get NOS 6N30s that he bought a large % of the world's stock...a big move to make unless you are convinced the NOS tubes are way better than the new ones. You can disagree with the name calling all you want...there is plenty of listening evidence that it matters...it is also the reason guys like Lukasz from Lampizator felt it was necessary to go with the 6N6P instead...i have to agree with him that these do sound much better than new 6N30s...at least in my Ayon it was a no brainer.

Second, you make a lot of assumptions about what I have done in my system. There was no quick A/B...it was months of one then months of the other and then back again for a couple of weeks and then finally back to the 6N6P tubes and sighing "ah, that's better". You also assume that the levels weren't matched. I always match when i do critical listening...call me a scientist but I like to control variables.

I actually believe that most of it can be explained with data if you get sufficient resolution of the harmonic spectrum and take seriously all harmonics present AND apply the correct psychoacoustic weighting (things that D.E.L Shorter from BBC or Daniel Cheever have proposed to give the correct "perceptual balance" on the raw numbers). Without this weighting, it is difficult to understand how tiny, high order or noise modulated components can impact sound quality. There is no "magic", only science but ALL the data has to be used and correctly.

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Steve Williams said:

I have zero noise with my ML3's and I attribute this (rightly or wrongly) to

1. Use of the Tele NOS ECC803's

2.I firmly believe that the best sound obtained from the ML3 Signature is in conjunction with the matching Lamm Signature preamp (LL1/LL1.1) where the output impedance of the preamp is matched to the input impedance of the ML3

3. As MikeL suggested I also believe that the proper choice of cabling also helps

To MikeL do you have the NF loop turned off

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microstrip said:

Morricab,

I reported my direct opinion about 6H30 when used with ARC and some of findings with my measurements. It was DaveyF main concern. Sorry if I am not interested at all on 6NP's, and was not addressing your long listening time in my general comments.

I have interest in what is explained and presented with relevance to current SOTA high-end. As far as I saw in past, the D. Chever work is a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering presenting "rudimentary exploration with a varied listening panel of five people" (author words). Do you know if this research is being continued?

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