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After a month of listening exclusively Melquiades and decided yestoday re-switch everything and to play Lamm’s ML2.

I was quite shocked with the result and I did not anticipate the ML2 could be so way off. I will not elaborate about the areas where ML2 did not perform well – it was way above the differentses that might be quantified. ML2 delivered absolutely different TYPE OF SOUND – it was a REPRODUCED SOUND with all characteristics of imitational efforts. In many instances I realized that I did not even recognized certain musical phrases in some known to me peaces - they were so burden under a threshold of reproduction efforts that I had to needed a LOT of efforts to convince myself that the shadows of the phrases actulay were there. Actually I was stunned how bad ML2 performed. Even if to take under consideration that it did not work for 30 days and that it should be burn-in a little still the result was quite appalling. (I know very well how ML2 sound being “cold”, however I run it for 15 hours toady…)

ML2 was not an accidental amp for me. I heard a countless amount of SE amplifiers, including all amps that the industry considers to be the contestants to Lamm ML2. The Lamm’s single-ended always was atop and it always demonstrated a certain musical-acoustic integrity that never was reached by any other single-ended challengers. There were incalculable amount of tacky and midrangey 2-3-stages 300B with thier gluey and honey sound. There were dehydrated and washy-washy Japanese crap-amplifiers along with those Moronic faces of the amplifiers distributors and thier sound of full of pretentiousness about nothingness. There was some glossy sounding 6L6 and “kinky” 2A3 that converted musicians from orchestras into residences of the retirement homes. There were some vulgar and none-evolved 211-based amps that sound like diluted Hot and Sour Soup from a bad Chinese restaurant. There were vicious 845-based that sound like an elephant stepped on a monkey and bathe of them are screaming at the same time. There were some OTLs, the best of them, with thier expedited and emancipated sound that good only for the “nouveau riche” of consumer consumption era.  There were a bunch of DIY amps and many commercial, not to mention some bridged and PPs.  (I mentioned the tubes juts in order do not mane the brands, which I do not necessarily remember)

I did not mean to knock the amplifier’s design – I have no rational to technically justify the negative, but where I was not mistaken was the fact that all of them did not performed in the way I demanded and did not deliver Sound that I might consider worth any attention.

Then there was the Lamm’s ML2. It is 3-stages SET with regulated Russky 6C33C - the rude and discourteous tube, as most of Russian tubes are. Everything about this amp suggests that it should not be interesting: the economically-made (not to say cheaply) PS supplies, gratuitous regulation of the output tube, none-serious input stage around a tube that should not used in power amplifiers, the a huge crappy 20uF coupling capacitors between the first and second stages, layout made convenient to assemble but "bad for sound", with a Russian version of 5687 in driver stage (the most critical stage to drive hungry 6C33) that almost-almost good enough in this application (actually it is not good enough and it should be change after 6 month of use because as soon the 6H6P drops even a minute fraction of it’s transconductance then the entier amp begins to sound like a wet dog) ... and many-many other things.
 
However, in spite of all those things the Lamm's ML2 does sound head and shoulder more interesting then any other SET. Interesting that the advantages of ML2 are not within some audiophile scale (although ML2 does in there very fine) but rather in some very strange “sound reproducing intelligence” that make this amp sort of to know what and when to do with sound. So, how come that with my exposure to Melquiades all that dependency from “sound reproducing intelligence” suddenly got evaporated and the performance thatML2 delivers make me today to look at the Lamm's ML2 sound as at a videbut of sub-talented tanager-pianist?

After quite long thinking and analyses (a few years) I believe and know the answer now. The answers does not derive form some kinds of technical limitations of Lamm ML2 but rather from a deep-imbedded original intentions and motivations that where the fundamentals of the ML2 creatior. I always said that audio is not about audio but about people and the performance of ML2, as I see it today, is a great illustration how an incorrect mental approach to a subject could lead to incorrect results. Yes, the mindframe of ML2 creator is the major problem and impediment of the ML2 amplifier. I do believe that the ML2 designer designed a magnificent amplifier that portrays his vision and his philosophy of sound reproduction - the philosophy that I found today fundamentally faulty, conspicuous, hazardous  or even menacing and evilish to a degree. Later on, whan I get time, I write up more detail observations about the flawed mental design principles of ML2 where I will elaborate on the subject.

Meanwhile, considering that ML2 is a fundamentally unsound and audio-limited devise and considering that ML2 still is hugely superior then any SET that I have heard out there … you may imagine how many REALY horrible amps we have in audio…

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