We then left Steve's on the long drive to Sam Lucero's that brought us to the border of Mexico. Sam had the Dali Megalines III, which I always wanted to listen to set up properly, due to my love for ribbons. Sam does not have a dedicated or a treated room, and his room is a bit small for the Megalines, which tower at 7 feet. The speakers need to be biamped, so he has 4 Atmasphere monoblocks, 140w each. Multitude of tubes, and a cat that perches itself on the transformer to keep warm and manages to not burn itself on the tubes.
Sam' room also opens into the kitchen on one side. Don't think it makes for ideal acoustics, but does give good off axis listening without having to sit in the sweet spot. Albert Porter ran his with VTL Siegfrieds, so interesting that these were OTLs of 14w each. I don't have enough to compare the amps to. Sam does have BATs as well, and he has a pair of Beveridges, which are vintage stats I would have loved to have heard, but they were not set up.
The Megalines have a huge soundstage and the ribbon tone. They have dynamics, but I would like to cross them over to subs to give a fuller lower mid bass. Sam uses an external Pass crossover, and most of the Dali owners have documented using their own external crossovers, so it is tough to compare systems with different crossover settings. Sam's seemed more accurate, and again as we moved from his Esoteric to his Studer tape, the leap was phenomenal. It played more easily, more involving, and PRAT. I would love to listen to this system with the BATs as well, and to listen to his Beveridges. I am not that familiar with tape so can't comment much on the discussion between Davey and Steve above on tape heads. One thing for sure, Sam is a techie and knows his stuff, you can tell from the details he gets into when you speak to him. We did not have as much time at Sam's as we were delayed on the way there, so we left and stopped over on the way to Phillip O Hanlon, which I will detail in a separate thread here http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...G1-loudspeaker&p=385062&viewfull=1#post385062
Sam' room also opens into the kitchen on one side. Don't think it makes for ideal acoustics, but does give good off axis listening without having to sit in the sweet spot. Albert Porter ran his with VTL Siegfrieds, so interesting that these were OTLs of 14w each. I don't have enough to compare the amps to. Sam does have BATs as well, and he has a pair of Beveridges, which are vintage stats I would have loved to have heard, but they were not set up.
The Megalines have a huge soundstage and the ribbon tone. They have dynamics, but I would like to cross them over to subs to give a fuller lower mid bass. Sam uses an external Pass crossover, and most of the Dali owners have documented using their own external crossovers, so it is tough to compare systems with different crossover settings. Sam's seemed more accurate, and again as we moved from his Esoteric to his Studer tape, the leap was phenomenal. It played more easily, more involving, and PRAT. I would love to listen to this system with the BATs as well, and to listen to his Beveridges. I am not that familiar with tape so can't comment much on the discussion between Davey and Steve above on tape heads. One thing for sure, Sam is a techie and knows his stuff, you can tell from the details he gets into when you speak to him. We did not have as much time at Sam's as we were delayed on the way there, so we left and stopped over on the way to Phillip O Hanlon, which I will detail in a separate thread here http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...G1-loudspeaker&p=385062&viewfull=1#post385062
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