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Rowuk got me re-thinking about how I arrived at the sound I now get from my system. The short answer (shorter than the Long Answer…) is that I started out trying to stay close to the sound of master tape from a nice reel-to-reel machine. Rightly or wrongly, I have always thought the best iteration of this sound was audibly less problematic than vinyl or CD sources, given ample consideration for the source sound in the first place. My approach with vinyl and CD was first to limit problems and keep CD “on par” with vinyl (and tape), then, later, I’ve tried to push for “more” Music without wrecking what I had before trying to increase the system’s range. Every component over the years was chosen to complement the other components, even if a component – such as the MA 9S2s or The Loudspeakers -  was chosen primarily to “push the envelope”. Since I did not develop The Loudspeakers myself, and I did not listen to them before I built them, I guess you could say I got lucky. Again, I did read what Troels Gravesen and others said about sound and the sound of his speakers, and I was more or less familiar with the sound of the big JBL monitors. (Again), I would not have gone forward unless I thought I had better than even odds of success. Back to the amps, I surely did consider “specs”, and I plugged the specs into my “experiential data base”, but it was use and listening that sold me. Generally speaking, the idea (of course) was to amplify the Good via The Loudspeakers without exacerbating the Bad. More Dumb Luck, I suppose, as it seems to have worked. Do the components complement each other? Sounds like it to me. I would say that problems are more subtractive than additive, and they do not swamp the Music I hear. Like I said in The Loudspeakers thread, recording techniques are clearly audible, and I consider this a result of “accurately” amplifying recordings. Fortunately, the “recording information” usually “allows ample room for” the “Musical Information”, as they are usually not the same thing in the playback I am listening to. I have turned up a few LPs where the mix and the sound I get was different enough from earlier systems that it surprised me, and not always in a good way. I am currently thinking this has to do with the way these LPs were made, vs. some fault with my playback, and I think I might “solve the problems” with cartridge SRA, once I set my mind to it. Back to Rowuk’s remarks about “tolerant” speakers, I think he is quite right, in the sense that Troels has gone way out of his way to make fairly complex crossovers as “easy” as possible for a real-world amplifier to drive through. However, I don’t think this means any amp could drive The Loudspeakers the way I want, and that’s why I chose the MA 9S2s, which I had already used to drive many complex “stacks” of vintage drivers I tested as potential center channels, and then I used them FR with my BassZillas. I can also say that with a lot of Music my BassZillas and The Loudspeakers driven by MA 9S2s are more similar than different, believe it or not, not because their differences are homogenized but because I only aimed for “more” in the first place, and I ended up close to where I hoped would. Actually, I got more than I expected, but I hate to crow.>>

Paul S

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