Best SET amps vs. CAT? CAT destroy all, or different tastes?

I should have put a smiley behind it ,lets stick to amplifiers on this forum
Besides XPE as a name for the speaker design i almost called it POWERSLAVE , as an electroacoustic transducer is a slave of power , maybe a nice name for a big bad and huge subwoofer

JackD201 said:

I feel the CATs I've heard don't quite have the "flow" in the micro details the VACs do. It's what might be analogous to grain is a solid state device, something I attribute to zero crossing distortion. .......

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Sorry to go a bit off topic.
Jack when you get the chance mind listening to the Benchmark AHB2 as this resolves the zero crossing distortion issue in solid state; utilises the THX Achromatic feed forward architecture.
Curious how you perceive this kind of distortion trait (if) in the AHB2, in theory it should not be.
Cheers
Orb

caesar said:

Maybe even too much choice, Tao, making heads spin and freezing the ability to pull the trigger...

Also, just noticed in your signature a very interesting system combination of Shindo and Sanders on your Maggies. Seems like polar opposites. Out of curiousity, have you tried Bryston with Shindo in your system?

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Hi Caesar,

The Magtech amp does wonders with the Maggies and the Shindo is just this happy marriage with the Magtech tho I've heard that a dht pre can also be a sweet match with the Sanders. I played my Magtech Shindo combo for the Australian distributor for Magnepan and Sanders and he went out and bought a Shindo for his personal use at home... just one of those surprisingly ideal relationships.

I've been looking for my next amplification setup for the last year and have a half and have tried ARC ref, Soulution, and Bryston amongst others... would love to try some Constellation Inspiration monos and a GAT perhaps as well... the search continues.

I've been interested in CAT since early in a The Absolute Sound days but my favourite valves have for some time been 211, EL34, 45s and 10Y so I figure that probably I'm going to end up with some triode based amps as an additional option to my current setup.

I have found it possible to find a single pair of speakers to keep me happy, also I could choose and live with just one digital source or one analogue source. But amplification seems for me more like carts... there is no one perfect solution and the best option is to have an all valve setup and a hybrid valve/SS setup as well (got to be atleast some valves in the circuit somewhere in any musical option). That mid bass presentation difference is for me the great divide that makes different music genres needing a different amp typology as well.

NAT Audio should be much better than CAT, from what I have heard from those who have tried both. Haven't heard myself. It helps that it has only one valve per mono rather than many so valves never go out of sync. It has 60w, 120w, and 160w monos each, depending on the model, all SET, class A, zero feedback. Spiritofmusic bought the 60w one. I have heard the 120w and 160w one but haven't compared. Know people who have.

It is on my shortlist of two as one can buy from manufacturer in Serbia directly. My preamp will definitely be NAT

I heard the NAT line stage a while back. IMHO, it wasn't in the same league as the CAT...nowhere near as resolving or as dynamic. Perhaps their latest is more competitive ( i have not heard it). I think their current tube phono stage runs off batteries, which would lead me to think twice about it.

Orb said:

Sorry to go a bit off topic.
Jack when you get the chance mind listening to the Benchmark AHB2 as this resolves the zero crossing distortion issue in solid state; utilises the THX Achromatic feed forward architecture.
Curious how you perceive this kind of distortion trait (if) in the AHB2, in theory it should not be.
Cheers
Orb

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I'd love to try that. I also seem to notice that the brands using the thermaltrack chips for bias are doing and sounding very well. Not all of them are stratospherically priced either. Seems a great easy solution to thermal bias drift.

DaveyF said:

I heard the NAT line stage a while back. IMHO, it wasn't in the same league as the CAT...nowhere near as resolving or as dynamic. Perhaps their latest is more competitive ( i have not heard it). I think their current tube phono stage runs off batteries, which would lead me to think twice about it.

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Which model are you referring t that you heard? A guy who has the battery one owns the expensive wavac as well, has had the kondo, and reckons the NAT to be next to the wavac, better than kondo. The wavac way more expensive.

Did you AB the NAT model you heard with the CAT, or was it in a different set up? The best thing about their pre is the dynamism and resolution. The bottom model wiped the floor with jadis and AR 5 se on those fronts when I ABed. I haven't compared to CAT, but know of someone who replaced his CAT gear with NAT gear. Hence my question if you heard them on the same system.

Read spiritofmusic's thread, he is comparing their old discontinued version to Koda K10.

bonzo75 said:

Which model are you referring t that you heard? A guy who has the battery one owns the expensive wavac as well, has had the kondo, and reckons the NAT to be next to the wavac, better than kondo. The wavac way more expensive.

Read spiritofmusic's thread, he is comparing their old discontinued version to Koda K10.

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I cannot remember which model it was ( it was a few years back). The 'AB' was carried out at a dealer in LA with the CAT Ultimate 1 and the NAT. That day, the CAT was far far more impressive. I think at the time the dealer happened to have the CAT on hand as a trade in. Perhaps you should take a listen to the new CAT Renaissance with the Black Path cap mods and 'AB' it against the NAT. IF the same thing holds true today as it did when I heard them, the CAT will be the easy choice.

DaveyF said:

I cannot remember which model it was ( it was a few years back). The 'AB' was carried out at a dealer in LA with the CAT Ultimate 1 and the NAT. That day, the CAT was far far more impressive. I think at the time the dealer happened to have the CAT on hand as a trade in. Perhaps you should take a listen to the new CAT Renaissance with the Black Path cap mods and 'AB' it against the NAT. IF the same thing holds true today as it did when I heard them, the CAT will be the easy choice.

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If it was a few years back, if it was a 2-box one it would have been Utopia, else it would have been the Symmetrical, which is their bottom one. It retails at 7k, can be bought direct for much less. Not sure how much the CAT Ultimate costs. Will compare CAT at some point though, the CAT distributor in London I know well and is not far off.

JackD201 said:

I'd love to try that. I also seem to notice that the brands using the thermaltrack chips for bias are doing and sounding very well. Not all of them are stratospherically priced either. Seems a great easy solution to thermal bias drift.

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Totally agree.
When anyone says solid state amplifiers technology (A and A/B designs) has not advanced since the 80's, they really should consider the advancement in bias/thermal/etc output transistor management; some seriously slick solutions now used.
Cheers
Orb

JackD201 said:

I'd love to try that. I also seem to notice that the brands using the thermaltrack chips for bias are doing and sounding very well. Not all of them are stratospherically priced either. Seems a great easy solution to thermal bias drift.

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Can you name some brands which use such chips?

McIntosh, Ayre, CH precision that I know of. According to Mr Google, Sanders, Theta, Viola, ARC D series and ATI too.

Tao,
Which Shindo preamp do/did you use with the Sanders? The little Shindo preamps have high 5kOhm output impedance, they are not easy to mach with other amps. But the bigger Shindos with 600 Ohm are nice, indeed!

JackD201 said:

I feel the CATs I've heard don't quite have the "flow" in the micro details the VACs do. It's what might be analogous to grain is a solid state device, something I attribute to zero crossing distortion.

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Why do you attribute this to solid state devices in general? Class A should not suffer from crossover distortion.

Birdwatcher said:

Tao,
Which Shindo preamp do/did you use with the Sanders? The little Shindo preamps have high 5kOhm output impedance, they are not easy to mach with other amps. But the bigger Shindos with 600 Ohm are nice, indeed!

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Hi Birdwatcher,
Both the Masseto and Auriges can happily drive the Magtech... they just flesh out that amp really well in terms of a finished balance. I’d imagine then the new Monbrison might also do this very nicely as well.

If I could afford a Giscours I am sure it would probably sound extraordinary but its not really in the same budgetary postal code to be a realistic match for Magtech.

More likely I’d swap up to a Hegel H30 for amp duties for the Maggies before moving any further up the preamp food chain... and since I’ve just spent my discretionary audio funds for the year and upgraded my Harbeths to a pair of rosewood 40.2s I’m thinking I’ll not likely be climbing anywhere near those kinds of lofty amplification peaks in the immediate future at any rate.

bazelio said:

Why do you attribute this to solid state devices in general? Class A should not suffer from crossover distortion.

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My years have passed. After going back and reading from the beginning I see poor sentence structuring on my part. What I meant was that the CATs were grainier up top than the VACs (note: this was a long time ago so things may be totally different now) and that was what was what I found analogous to typical SS grain. Since on the topic, as most SS amps, even those run in full Class A are Push-Pull. The few that are fully singled ended tend not to get past 10wpc or so. This is where the bias comes in because as partnering devices do their dance (where timing is the issue just as it is with Tubes) that bias, be it full A or AB heavily biased into A needs to be very stable as the crossing point itself may drift unpredictably up and down. The usual cause is heat where too much of it affects the linearity and output capability of the output devices and the other power supply robustness/quality (not ennough capacitance storage for peaks for example). The usual way to reduce the distortion given a set heat management system is feedback. I guess what I am saying is that simply being class A doesn't guarantee you won't have problems in that area. There is also the issue of voltage step for the given transistors. Generally the fast amps with the smaller voltage steps are less grainy simply because they switch faster, more often and with more gradients. No free lunch there either as the faster, the easier to run off into oscillation which brings us back to power supply quality and thermal management among other considerations chief of which would be the load as discussed in earlier posts. To me frankly speaking the methods used are not so big a concern for me anymore, I've heard to many products that have pretty much dampened my bias for Class A Zero Negative Feedbackndesigns. These days tank like heatsinking vs silent fans, feed forward, local vs global vs no feedback, EI vs Toroids, circuit layouts, class of operation, I'm just not very dogmatic these days and getting less so with age. These days I just evaluate the quality of the end results vis a vis what the particular mission at hand is.

I apologize for the confusion, the way I read my post I might have been posting late in the evening, rushing off thereby being much too brief or maybe just lazy at the time.