Worst amp you've ever heard?

[Guest sacd lover]

What do you expect when you take 2 amplifiers with an output impedance that is already too high and put them

in series? Something that can't even drive hd600's...

He put them in series .... c'mon are you kidding???

[PFKMan23]

Does KG even have a sense of humor??

[Guest sacd lover]

Does KG even have a sense of humor??

KG most definitely has a sense of humor.

So what impedence could the B52 drive .... 600 ohm Beyers?

[DigiPete]

Either the RSA B52 or the Gilmore light (sorry justin).

The B52??? I heard it, it was rather decent, certainly not the even close to the worst I've heard

[Guest sacd lover]

The B52??? I heard it, it was rather decent, certainly not the even close to the worst I've heard

Rather decent for $5k ..... ouch!!! I want freaking unbelieveably amazing for $3k.

[909]

The B52??? I heard it, it was rather decent, certainly not the even close to the worst I've heard

I think they are seriously biased against Ray. I am certainly not a big fan, but I don?t think his amps could be considered the worst I?ve heard. And I liked the Gilmore Lite. I don?t like the cute amp and the little dot II amp those are pretty bad.

[909]

Rather decent for $5k ..... ouch!!! I want freaking unbelieveably amazing for $3k.

No offense but I think that's a different standard than worse amp you've heard. That's more to do with the cost to performance ratio.

[DigiPete]

I want freaking unbelieveably amazing for $3k.

Easy: Build yourself a Dynamite for $1K

[Guest sacd lover]

Easy: Build yourself a Dynamite for $1K

I have something in the pipeline for around that price .... if I control myself. A Zana killer for sure .... 50% of the price, 30% more power, more refinement and really inexpensive tubes. I have been having a blast buying tubes for this amp. I have a hundred already!

[909]

I have something in the pipeline for around that price .... if I control myself. A Zana killer for sure .... 50% of the price, 30% more power, more refinement and really inexpensive tubes. I have been having a blast buying tubes for this amp. I have a hundred already!

Are you bitter you didn't get a Zana? Still lusting.

So what's in the pipeline (is Mikhail building it?) any details you wish to reveal?

[Dusty Chalk]

I think they are seriously biased against Ray.

You think?

But then again, I am seriously biased against Ray for a reason: he builds seriously not good amps. I mean, sometimes I believe it's a matter of taste (Hirsch's obsession with the R10's, his previous obsession with the MicroZOTL, etc.), but at least in those cases, I could hear what it was he liked about those equipment. But in the case of RSA, I just don't hear anything good.

And KG -- in series? Don't you mean in parallel? What the L would be the point in putting two amps in series? And I didn't think you could do that...? I looked up bridging (earlier today, perchance), and found out that's not even what it means -- it just means driving the two sides (+, -) with two different amps.

[tiberian]

i've heard a lot of amps: various cmoys, dynalos, dynahis, dynamites, headroom amps of all flavors both single ended and balanced, multiple singlepowers, pimetas, ppas, m3s, a millett, meier amps, both grace amps, the RA-1, completely custom tube amps, multiple eddie current amps, mints, the GCHA (stock and modded), the RKV, receiver headphone jacks, integrated amps, poweramps running K1000s, and the SR-71, and every single one of those was more or less faithful to the signal. some i liked, some i didn't, but it was a matter of flavor, not the core representation of the music. there is only one amp i've ever heard that produced a remix: that was the Raptor with a pair of RS-1s. the Raptor turned snare drums into mushy tom-toms, something i've never heard with any other products. that is why i consider the worst amp i've ever heard. maybe the Raptor sounds better with high impedance headphones. maybe it doesn't. it really doesn't matter, because Ray Samuels claims that the Raptor drives Grados well. changing the character of the signal is not what i consider to be "driven well."

again, ray listens at a very loud volume, and he listens to slow and quiet stuff, which partly explains why his amps sound bloated/rolled off/whatever, i guess. also to those who has been to ray's place, can anyone describe how does ray's main rig sound like...?

when i was at a chicago meet earlier this year he said his amps are SOTA and have no house sound, hah.

[PFKMan23]

SOTA?

[humanflyz]

SOTA=State Of The Art

[PFKMan23]

HEHEs

[909]

I didn?t have a pleasant experience with the Raptor. It really didn?t do anything special. I thought it had decent separation, speed, and detail with my HD650s, but it really started to hurt my ear after about the first hour. And then the following days, I could only last 20 minutes or so without wanting to turn it down or off. I changed cables from the UR4s to M-Paths, which helped a bit. Sometime afterwards, I thought possibly my source at the time (E5) could have been partially responsible. My experience dealing with Ray was OK until I wanted to return the Raptor. At first he just ignored my emails. And then two days before my trial period ended he sent me a rather rude and abrupt email, indicating something like love or hate it and if I wanted a refund he needed the amp in two days. So I sent it back overnight because I didn?t want to deal with any headaches.

With respect to my time with the Hornet and after further comparison using my E4s, I thought differences were negligible between the Hornet and my Karma?s headphone jack. So I sold it because I couldn?t justify keeping it. Though, I never found the Hornet to be fatiguing or harmful to my sensitive ears.

[tiberian]

I didn?t have a pleasant experience with the Raptor. It really didn?t do anything special. I thought it had decent separation, speed, and detail with my HD650s, but it really started to hurt my ear after about the first hour. And then the following days, I could only last 20 minutes or so without wanting to turn it down or off. I changed cables from the UR4s to M-Paths, which helped a bit. Sometime afterwards, I thought possibly my source at the time (E5) could have been partially responsible. My experience dealing with Ray was OK until I wanted to return the Raptor. At first he just ignored my emails. And then two days before my trial period ended he sent me a rather rude and abrupt email, indicating something like love or hate it and if I wanted a refund he needed the amp in two days. So I sent it back overnight because I didn?t want to deal with any headaches.

With respect to my time with the Hornet and after further comparison using my E4s, I thought differences were negligible between the Hornet and my Karma?s headphone jack. So I sold it because I couldn?t justify keeping it. Though, I never found the Hornet to be fatiguing or harmful to my sensitive ears.

what a douchebag.

[justin]

Either the RSA B52 or the Gilmore light (sorry justin).

That's ok, it wouldn't have made a difference if something else was in the box, so no offense taken.

[kevin gilmore]

YES people 2 amps in series!!!

An unbalanced amplifier drives one wire of the headphone and the other wire goes to ground. It has a specific

output impedance. Take 2 of the same amplifiers and drive both sides of the headphone. The maximum

output voltage swing doubles. The maximum available current does not change. The maximimum available

power is 4 times. THE OUTPUT IMPEDANCE DOUBLES!!!

Now if you have a solid state amplifier with an extremely low output impedance in the first place, doubling

the output impedance has little effect. But when you have a tube amp with a 120 ohm output impedance

(and you are kidding yourself if you actually believe that number for the raptor) you now have a balanced

amplifier with an output impedance of 240 ohms.

Really no kidding.

This is how every single krell amplifier since the fpb series works. This is how every single solid state

balanced output amplifier also works. (krell, parasound,big pass labs,crown....)

If you really want to hear what a tube amp can do, get your hands on a pair of the small atmasphere

amps and hook them up balanced to your headphones. You will be blown away. Circlotrons really

work well for this.

[kevin gilmore]

again, ray listens at a very loud volume, and he listens to slow and quiet stuff, which partly explains why his amps sound bloated/rolled off/whatever, i guess. also to those who has been to ray's place, can anyone describe how does ray's main rig sound like...?

Well when i heard ray's system about 1.5 years ago it was just plain awful. For a whole bunch of reasons.

Absolute crap turntable. Not sure what cartridge was in it.

Ray's $5k phono preamp with absolutely no subsonics filter.

Seriously underpowered amplifiers that were wasting 90+% of their power

whacking the woofers around due to the subsonics.

2 way transmission line speakers with dynaudio drivers that

remided me of an old eton madisound kit...

Now ray has replaced those seriously underpowered amps with

new cary amps and has replaced the turntable with a high line

VPI which i'm sure has a lot less rumble. So his system is now

up to just lousy.

The only nice thing i can say about ray's speakers are that they

have a wonderful paint job. Which seems to be the only

thing ray actually cares about, the look and feel of his stuff.

Those are $8k speakers ray said.

I own wilsons, B&W, quad esl63's and celestions. Trust me,

those ain't $8k speakers anymore than the phono preamp

is $5k.

[PFKMan23]

I didn?t have a pleasant experience with the Raptor. It really didn?t do anything special. I thought it had decent separation, speed, and detail with my HD650s, but it really started to hurt my ear after about the first hour. And then the following days, I could only last 20 minutes or so without wanting to turn it down or off. I changed cables from the UR4s to M-Paths, which helped a bit. Sometime afterwards, I thought possibly my source at the time (E5) could have been partially responsible. My experience dealing with Ray was OK until I wanted to return the Raptor. At first he just ignored my emails. And then two days before my trial period ended he sent me a rather rude and abrupt email, indicating something like love or hate it and if I wanted a refund he needed the amp in two days. So I sent it back overnight because I didn?t want to deal with any headaches.

With respect to my time with the Hornet and after further comparison using my E4s, I thought differences were negligible between the Hornet and my Karma?s headphone jack. So I sold it because I couldn?t justify keeping it. Though, I never found the Hornet to be fatiguing or harmful to my sensitive ears.

This confuses me and here is why. If I read your comments on HF you say that the Raptor a fairly good amp. So is it or is it not (atleast according to you)? I don't know about you, but if listening to an amp led to my ears in pain, that's not a good amp at all.

[Guest sacd lover]

Are you bitter you didn't get a Zana? Still lusting.

So what's in the pipeline (is Mikhail building it?) any details you wish to reveal?

Bitter???

Lusting .... this is a headamp not a Lexus!

I wouldnt say I ever reached the lust stage for anything audio ..... well maybe the first old chassis Supra. I really wanted one of those. But I waited for a long time before I found one for the right price. Anyway, I already have amps that sound as good or better than the Zana and I havent even got my Supra-X back yet. My dilema is I dont need any more amps period but I want to try everything. The hd30 is the interesting one to me .... nos 7233's. But, I want to do something unique, maybe extreme, if I am going to do another one.

I really need to sell one or two amps or give one to my brother; I just cant decide which one.

[909]

This confuses me and here is why. If I read your comments on HF you say that the Raptor a fairly good amp. So is it or is it not (atleast according to you)? I don't know about you, but if listening to an amp led to my ears in pain, that's not a good amp at all.

Shortly before I made my decision to purchase my EC2A3, I was upset at Ray and based on my preconceived notions about they way things were run at HF I decided to tactfully make comments. Additionally, I didn?t want my upset to cloud my judgment so I waited. In a way, I am glad I did because after incorporating different cables, listening to the G08 and Apollo I do believe my E5 and UR4s were partially responsible. If you notice, I reserved my commentary about the MPX3 too because initially I really disliked the sound with those awful new production EH 6SN7 tubes. And Mikhail had been such a gentleman and very nice person to deal with and I didn?t want to really dish out anything to slight either SP (or even RS).

Fast forward, I now know my hears are sensitive to high frequencies. I?ve had certain cables, headphones, sources, and amps that were just uncomfortable and sometimes to the point of fatiguing to my ear. And I?ve been able to minimize this with selecting different components and other times I?ve not. I am getting lazy and don?t desire to work that hard to make something work in my system. After hosting two meets and talking with different people, listening to their rigs and so on I realized that some prefer a brighter, thinner sound and don?t have any issues with highs.

If you read my posts, you?ll see I?ve been fairly consistent. Though as a meet host leaving impressions, I focus on the positive and I?ve possibly done so more in the past. Just recently I posted about my ear issue/Raptor experience on HF before posting it in this thread.

I don?t think the Raptor is the worst amp I?ve heard and it does do some things very nicely with the HD650s. I try to exclude the person stuff and separate out the good and not so good and then give my impression. I don?t think the Raptor sucks, but IMO it isn?t my favorite type of sound and has a high cost to performance ratio.

[909]

Bitter???

Lusting .... this is a headamp not a Lexus!

I wouldnt say I ever reached the lust stage for anything audio ..... well maybe the first old chassis Supra. I really wanted one of those. But I waited for a long time before I found one for the right price. Anyway, I already have amps that sound as good or better than the Zana and I havent even got my Supra-X back yet. My dilema is I dont need any more amps period but I want to try everything. The hd30 is the interesting one to me .... nos 7233's. But, I want to do something unique, maybe extreme, if I am going to do another one.

I really need to sell one or two amps or give one to my brother; I just cant decide which one.

You wanted a ZD.

If you ever want to send an amp that you think sounds better than the ZD my way for a week or two, I'll cover the cost of shipping. You may convert me because hearing is believing.

[kevin gilmore]

This confuses me and here is why. If I read your comments on HF you say that the Raptor a fairly good amp. So is it or is it not (atleast according to you)? I don't know about you, but if listening to an amp led to my ears in pain, that's not a good amp at all.

Its the simplest of SRPP designs. It sounds like all amps of that particular topology. The output cap is size constrained. For high impedance headphones

it is ok if you like that type of sound. It is nowhere near as bad as the hr-2 or hornet. It is not something i will likely listen to again. If i had to grade it

i would give it a C-. There are so many things i would give a D- or F to... I think that fits into the "fairly good" range...