ying and yang--Lamm ML3 and darTZeel 458

paul79

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The designer/manufacturer of the AM Audio 833S Ultima wrote to me that he will add an unbalancing transformer inside the amplifiers.

Do you have any recommendation for the highest sound quality unbalancing transformer I could perhaps specify for him?

Finemet from Hitachi Metals would be your best, if you can get them in there. These are the best signal transformers on the planet, but not cheap. Expect to pay more than double vs. Lundahl or Sowter.
 

Folsom

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I will second your recommendation, but accepting they sound different. I have tried a few of them, as well as Jensen and the FlexConnect (Interocitor). Adding a balancing transformer can need a few passive components for compensation that should be tuned for the circuit and each transformer. Even the several strapping options of a Lundhall change its sound.

It is not an easy choice IMHO. As soon as you look in their catalogues the doubts arise, as they have many models!

Yes. A task for the amp maker...
 

Steve Williams

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Mike
Im out as well but never personal. We’ll always be good friends. I understand totally where you’re coming from and have always had great respect for what you bring to the audiophile community. As soon as you bought that amp I remember thinking how much fun and enjoyment you were going to have. This thread has been a great read and most informative to me at least even though it has taken many convoluted turns. Long and the short of it we always learn from one of your threads Mike.
 

marty

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Mike you have been making statements throughout this thread that really are confusing as Marty pointed out to you several days ago. His questions and comments have gone unanswered by you.
Not quite accurate. I merely asked a question as to whether some timbral and tonal differences in the amps can in part be be ameliorated to some degree by tone control adjustments on the back of the speakers.
 
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harleyguy

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Mike but this is what you said
u have been making statements throughout this thread that really are confusing as Marty pointed out to you several days ago. His questions and comments have gone unanswered by you. I remain fixed in my belief Mike that your Dart is NOT better than the Lamm LL1. You are talking about Vlad's defining work much the same as Dave Wilson's recent WAMM which is a culmination of his life experience. Think of it Mike as someone coming in and saying "yours is just OK whereas mine is better as I know better than you the designer"

Why don't you stop talking about the confusion in the bass response and if you were really interested try the pair together Mike and do a fair comparison by using an LL1 rather than casually suggesting that your Dart pre might be better than the LL1.

Reading this thread mike and trying to get a feel for your impressions to understand what you are hearing, I believe that I can sum it upon one word...."headroom" with the Dart, nothing more.

I've read here in this thread that you as well as Jazdoc have commented about the bass on the ML3 as being the best you've heard. There are too many comments here in this thread that I find totally confusing and sometimes misleading and now to read a supposition on your part that the Dart pre with the ML3 will possibly be better than the LL1 is IMO nothing more than conjecture on your part. Vlad worked for 5 years on his Signature series before bringing to to market and along comes a comment from you that you suspect your combination will give a better audio presentation than what Vlad spent 5 years of his life developing.I totally disagree with your premiss Mike. There are too many confusing comments in this thread for me to understand especially after jazdoc who you invited over to listen made comments that he was hearing things that he has never heard before.

You obviously have a strong bias for the Dart (but heck I have the same for the LL1/ML3 combo) and your direction is clearly guided by the bias. There was never any doubt for me as to where your mind would take you but when you now begin to inflict conjecture into the equation the your Dart preamp is perhaps better than the LL1 to me serves no purpose in this thread unless and until you put the Lamm LL1 preamp into the equation with the ML3 your comments are nothing more than speculation



sorry

agree
 

jeff1225

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The LAMM's 32 watts can't power everything, and they obviously don't work on the MM7's to Mike's satisfaction. I've never thought the ML3 worked to my satisfaction on the Kharma's when I've heard them at CES. On Steve's Wilsons they sound awesome.

The art of audiophilia is component matching. I think that DDK is correct that you should buy your favorite amp and match it to the speakers it can drive, most of us do the opposite.
 

Folsom

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The LAMM's 32 watts can't power everything, and they obviously don't work on the MM7's to Mike's satisfaction. I've never thought the ML3 worked to my satisfaction on the Kharma's when I've heard them at CES. On Steve's Wilsons they sound awesome.

The art of audiophilia is component matching. I think that DDK is correct that you should buy your favorite amp and match it to the speakers it can drive, most of us do the opposite.

Um, I think that's the of opposite of what he was said...
 

jeff1225

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Um, I think that's the of opposite of what he was said...

Mike said: "tonight i had a good audio friend visit and we played the 15ips 1/4" master dub of LZ1 (both reels) at a significant volume level. it was an out-of-body roller coaster experience. there is no way that music would have been served effectively by the ML3's. it could play it sure, but it would have been so much less. and that is something i cherish. that ability to just stretch and reach for the highest level of energy and be so free and easy with it means a lot to me. it's essential. what does all that mean? don't know exactly."

Mike "cherishes" something that the ML3's do not do....sounds like a lack of satisfaction to me.
 

KeithR

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can't we all just get along?

can't there be multiple ways to nirvana?

at this level its personal preference. none of the gear here is poorly designed, has weak power supplies, uses crappy parts, etc. I'm sure Mike's visitors all have thought differently about the various amps/sonic signatures as well.
 

jeff1225

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can't we all just get along?

can't there be multiple ways to nirvana?

at this level its personal preference. none of the gear here is poorly designed, has weak power supplies, uses crappy parts, etc. I'm sure Mike's visitors all have thought differently about the various amps/sonic signatures as well.

Don't bring poor Rodney King into this....
 

Audiocrack

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When a high quality tube amp of 60/72 watts - the Berning 845/211 amp (see the review of it by RH in TAS) that he listened to for a few days - in Mike’s view does not have enough power to drive his loudspeakers in his listening room, what can be expected from a tube amp that has about only half of this power? Sure, the latter employs a different (non OTL) topology and separate power supplies, but this cannot turn a (mere) 32 watts amp into a powerhouse. For this reason I asked Mike in the beginning of this thread if he was planning to use the Lamms only for certain types of (less challenging) music. Mike did not answer my question but he cannot be surprised at all with the outcome (or his view on the outcome) of his ‘Lamm experience’.

In all honesty, I did not and still do not understand Mike’s ‘Lamm move’ from a power perspective unless he is indeed prepared to use these amps only for the afore mentioned types of music.

And just to be clear on this: I am using a 50 watts set amp in combination with a cones loudspeaker and I am quite happy with the power they generate in my (not small) listening room (and playing a lot of very challenging classical music).
 
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rockitman

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In all honesty, I did not and still do not understand Mike’s ‘Lamm move’ from a power perspective unless he is indeed prepared to use these amps only for the afore mentioned types of music.

To be fair, he's not driving woofers with the SET. They are self-powered. I would have thought driving the midranges and tweets alone would be no problem with the Lamm's. Apparently these drivers sensitivity is not high enough.
 

Audiocrack

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To be fair, he's not driving woofers with the SET. They are self-powered. I would have thought driving the midranges and tweets alone would be no problem with the Lamm's. Apparently these drivers sensitivity is not high enough.

Sure, you are fully right on the fact that the amps only have to drive the midrange towers and not the bass towers. But exactly the same applied to the - in comparison to the Lamm amps (nearly) twice as powerful - Berning 845/211 amps that Mike played with in his own system for a weekend or so. He loved certain aspects of these OTL amps but found them (in his set up) lacking in command / power. In light of (t)his experience it as still a mystery for me why the Lamm amps - as regards the aspect of command / power - could possibly have succeeded.
 
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morricab

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Edit: Completely off topic post about Fremer's listening room. Deleted.

A lot of guys here are too visual and mistake "messy" for "bad sounding". I never had pristine listening rooms but almost always had good sound despite stuff hanging around. I have been in more beautiful but poor soundin rooms (many treated extensively) than I care to mention.

I had a dealer come to my place once to drop off some NBS and Kondo power cables and he came by when I was not home. My (ex) girlfriend let him in and he looked at my system and started criticizing immediately about this was not right and that was not right and the walls were not treated etc. etc....my (ex) girlfriend very calmly asked him if he would like to actually hear the system as is (without the fancy power cords) and he said sure. The moment the music started...his mouth stopped moving...stuck hung open (or so my ex-tells me since I wasn't there). When he could speak he told her that he couldn't believe it with all the things he had seen "wrong" in the room, racks etc. The lesson is simple, never, ever judge a room purely visually or you could end up looking pretty foolish.
 

Mike Lavigne

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got home late last night, this morning listening to the ML3's since they were the last amps I had going Saturday night last I listened. too tired to think about changing amps right now. just enjoying some tunes.

I've not read all the posts made in the last 4-5 days, but i'd like to make clear that my motivations in my amplifier odyssey here are not to replace what the darTZeel's do. rather it's to have the best possible 'other view' from my tube amp favorite. and to optimize the intimate side of that SET tube amp viewpoint. the big VAC's just dropped into the situation uninvited and unneeded. yet they do confuse the issue.

the ML3's answer the question I was asking......however you cut it. they scratch the itch fully. the only question is whether owning 2 sets of amps that do different things is worth the whole envelope of effort and investment. but that is what I wanted to know. how good is the bass from the ML3's? it's great and the perfect 'tube' bass up to the point where they can't keep up with the musical demands. but perfect tube bass, while fully doing it for jazdoc, does not fully do it for me. it's like the Garrard 301 and what it did for the music in my system. it was fun and involving. but it also was in the way of some of the aspects of the music. you trade enhancement for transparency. is that the universal popular viewpoint? no.....but it's mine.

the Berning 211/845 was a fantastic amp which similarly ran out of steam on bigger music. but it did not do the holographic tonality magic tricks of the ML3's in my system as well. it was more linear and more similar to the darTZeel. it did have it's own magic and it is maybe my third favorite tube amp (i'm familiar with). but it was not enough down the tube road to offer a real ying to the yang of the darts. it did not appear to me worth adding as an alternative. but.....if I had a set of 105db horns, and it was going to be my only amp, then it would be a strong contender to the ML3's.

i'm going to just ignore those who claim some sort of issue with my room size or speakers as being friendly to the ML3's. period. the issue is what the darts do, not any system issue. I could live with the ML3's on all the music if I did not have the reference of what the darts do. but I do have that reference. and that is the baseline for me of my system. there is not game plan going forward. i'm just going to enjoy my further discovery process and see where it takes me. in 6 months likely the dust will settle and i'll know more. i'll be living and enjoying each day with these great amp choices......until I don't.
 

paul79

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Cool journey. Seems like you are finding different ways to say the same thing though. "When references do not align". Sounds like a Dr. Phil show. :)

You do you man. As you have been. Let the rest go.
 

microstrip

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Mike,

What kind of numerical scale has the new NH18? dB's, like the 8550 integrated, or just arbitrary units?
 

zztop7

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A lot of guys here are too visual and mistake "messy" for "bad sounding". I never had pristine listening rooms but almost always had good sound despite stuff hanging around. I have been in more beautiful but poor soundin rooms (many treated extensively) than I care to mention.

I had a dealer come to my place once to drop off some NBS and Kondo power cables and he came by when I was not home. My (ex) girlfriend let him in and he looked at my system and started criticizing immediately about this was not right and that was not right and the walls were not treated etc. etc....my (ex) girlfriend very calmly asked him if he would like to actually hear the system as is (without the fancy power cords) and he said sure. The moment the music started...his mouth stopped moving...stuck hung open (or so my ex-tells me since I wasn't there). When he could speak he told her that he couldn't believe it with all the things he had seen "wrong" in the room, racks etc. The lesson is simple, never, ever judge a room purely visually or you could end up looking pretty foolish.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

+1 +10 +100 +1000

ETC.

zz.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Mike,

What kind of numerical scale has the new NH18? dB's, like the 8550 integrated, or just arbitrary units?

It shows a numeric readout from + to - in .5 dB steps.

The highest I’ve seen was an accidental +11.5 dB. I’ve seen -90.0 dB but likely goes lower. Not sure if there are limits. It’s easy to do the .5 dB steps with the remote. And not yet not been able to fine tune to where it needs to be for the right volume. It allows for very fine adjustments.

The normal listening range depending on the amp and source is -35db to +5db.

I do also like that you can change the volume while it’s muted.
 

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