Romy the Cat wrote:

Last week a local audio guy come to my place to listed some music and I played to him my Wand’s Bruckner 4 in video room. With all “phenominality” of the performance I need to confess that sound was horrible. The guy did not complain, so I did not stress it as well. Later on I show to him some other video material and I found that I hardly understood a regular speech from the screen. So, what did I changed? I did a change and I did not listen my video room since then. Last week I did it with my visitor, so I did yesterday, so I immensely hate the sound I’m getting got now. So, what did I changed? I change whole amplification. The key was my laziness – I wanted to have a remote control for my video system, can you blame me” Formerly I used Yamaha C2 preamp with Yamaha B2 power amp. Adding 1.5dB on preamp’s tone control bass I did have OK sound (for video) driving my video speakers, whatever they are. Then I decided that since the amplification is crap anyhow then why I don’t I get identically bad consumer receiver and driver my video room with a comfortable remote consol? Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? So, this was what I did – bough off eBay $70 Sony stereo receiver, got rid of my high-endish Yamaha from 70s and put the contemporary crap in use. Holy shit, I never thought that it might be so bad!!! I understand that it is video and I do not need to have good sound but what I end up was beyond any acceptance. I can put the Yamaha B2 power amp back to the service but I can’t use the OPPO digital volume control – it kills sound faster then Ebola virus. So, kids do not let kids to use those cheep consumer audio…

This week on Thursday and Friday I had two “audio visitors” in my listening room. We did some listening and as it have become customary: they asked me to show something “interesting” or different in my Opera Room. BTW, for whatever reasons people do love my Opera room decor tremendously, so do I.

Serge wrote:

Romy consider that the engineers who did your Altecs in their worst nightmare could not imagine their lovely cinema speakers would be used with solid state amplifier which badly distorts on LOW power levels. It has 100 crappy watts and the first watt is the crappiest.

Romy the Cat wrote:

This week on Thursday and Friday I had two “audio visitors” in my listening room. We did some listening and as it have become customary: they asked me to show something “interesting” or different in my Opera Room. BTW, for whatever reasons people do love my Opera room decor tremendously, so do I. So, I was playing some “interesting” fragments to my visitor and was shocked how horrible the sound was. The consumer $70 worth receiver that I am using is rater at 100W but I clearly hear horrible clipping at I would say 90dB in bass. The whole sound was so flat and “in your face” that I made the decision to return back to my Yamaha B2 configuration. Even in context of low-demand video sound the crap that this consumer receiver out is too devastating. Now I need to look for preamp with properly implemented tone controls and remote, sucks!

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/PDF/YamahaB2_Circuit.PDF

… that the signal goes directly from input to the grid of the first transistor on the drive circuit board,  bypassing two board on the left. I kind of like this amp driving the Model 19 bass module while EQe. It does not give the proper bass but it gives not annoying bass for video room. Sure, during my fireplace sessions I do not do video and play 2-ch music and here is where the absence of the horrible Model 19 HF module really pays off but I do not think that I will consider other amplification after putting BS back to the business. Not that I feel that B2 is great but it is fine for what THAT room does and meant to do.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Stopped by at local audio friend this Sunday and watch some Brunner, Mahler and Wagner at his HT playback. He has integrated playback installation and video is played at his main system. I am not a fan of good quality of  video playback and feel that my cheep Cetla 91 goes good enough to play video but I have to admit that there WAS some added value in his demonstration. I was not impressed by 5-ch sound (am long-standing not supporter of it) and with a few other aspects but for all intended purposes as Wand’s brass blew up during Bruckner 4 then it was very clear that my friend playback presented different definition of gravitas than my Opera Room able to. I have experienced something like audio envy and I said to myself that I want it to be in my home like this.   At this point I do not know what I will be doing. I might try to drive Cetla 91 with a full-range Milq or multi-amp it with Milq and B2. For sure the key in it is that I have no midbass or upperbass channels in Cetla and I am not exactly willing to make them. So, I wonder if I might come up with some kind of solution that would be easy to implement and deliver a sufficient impact. I do think that if I drive Cetla’s MF from SET then it might be more fun, let see how it goes….