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Well, Jessie, I think you're  exercising a wishful thinking but you have, I think, a wrong subject for your thinking. Neither Lamm nor any other high-end manufacture care about result as a concept but rather a result as product. A product but its nature of being a product is a compilation of rendered efforts projected to the reimbursable values. So, the Hi-Fi companies produce Products they do not produce Sound. Sound for them is juts a tradable commodity.

I personally, as a  person who observes Lamm Industries as a company that exists explicitly to generate revenue (it is what any business does, without exception) and that produce “Products” have no problem with ML3, in fact I think it was a brilliant move – Vladimir juts lost money because he did not do it few years ago. However, as a person who is interested in boundary capacity of pure abstract audio I recognize the introduction of ML3 as no event. From the place where I stay even the well-performing ML2.0 was not satisfactory solution anymore – becose it is juts one single amp – what to do with it?

For the amplification solution that I would consider worth interest it should be DSETs. Look what the guy does: can you see him using one single amp for his playback?

Also, I do not see needs to use feedback in SETs. I’m not saying that it is wrong I juts saying that I see not needs. It is very difficult to make a commercial SET with no feedback and the no-feedback SETs are way too sanative for load and require a lot of precise tuning. SETs with feedback address many problems by patching those problems…. however what it the problems do not exist to begin with? The ML2 ran global feedback, and I’m presuming the ML3 does as well (the 12AX7 at line-input). In addition Vladimir it looks like run a local feedback from the GM70 plate to his driver stage. Well, I’m sure Lamm has his rational but this rational I find arguable. Whatever the rational would be if would end up with Lamm’s desire to extend the amp’s response, drop impedance and “simplify” the demands to output transformer. Ironically all those ventures become not the subject of inters in case the amp was made as a DSET.

Still, as in many other articles of my site I do not criticize manufactures in what they do but rather I criticize the industry reviewer for not performing their duty. In any civilized industry (or in the art world) criticism, the professional criticism, is a valuable tool for consumers and producers navigation. A smart criticism and analyses is something that moves progress in a field.  Look for instance on the history at the greatest musical, literature critics – they advanced their field as much as the greatest composers or writers. They did it but fertilizing “better” and de-fertilizing worst. In case of Hi-Fi we - the consumers and manufactures - as the producers have not such a filter. Would it be then most of the Hi-Fi product, the Lamm ML2.1 for instance, would not be possible. So, who could say if the ML2 was a prerequisite of ML3? In my auricle “About destiny of “High-End Sound”:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=3520

I will lead the readers to the idea that for today typical Audio-Moron a definition of “Hi-Fi quality” is in fact a simulated surrogate of sonic artificiality and many of the recent “suddenly successful” hi-fi products intentionally were made to satisfy those “simulated surrogate demands: Lamm ML2.1, any products of Harmonic Technology, Kharma and Magico loudspeakers, SACD and many others… Will the ML3 as the next step of the “Lamm’s progress?” So far no one said that ML2.1 was a failure. The “critics” Marc Mickelson and Art Dudley (actually Art was more sensible) provided “deep analyses” and concluded that the ML2.1 was : “one of the very best amps on the planet. Don't miss them.” Sure they did not miss it. What was missed was an ability of people like Marc Mickelson   to send the amps back suggesting to Lamm “keep working and let me know when you make to right”. Unfortunate it is not how it works in this stupid industry.

BTW, I got an email from a visitor of my site who proposed that I should not be as hard on Mickelson as he could receive for his review the Lamm ML2.1 amplifier with…  the ML2.0 internals.  Well, would not even know how to comment on it. I personally doubt that Lamm would go for this but if it was the case then … I do not know even how to name it….

Rgs,
The caT

PS:

jessie.dazzle wrote:

The future L3 preamp could be equipped with 5 or 6 pairs of outputs.

Yep, keep dreaming. The L2 had 2 outputs; one was with reversible polarity, one without. I am sure Lamm had default time to keep the preamp under $15K if he put an extra relay in there to fix the polarity of second output. There is also some poorly technical problem why I hardly see it happens. Paraphrasing what Paul said: any general product guarantees mediocrity….

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