Roumelio.

What is an amp if not flat? If you want some more dynamics, buy a graphic eq with as many knobs as you can get and paint a smiley face curve on it.

Hacked account.

Bryston 4B NRB... It's at a pretty good price for a Canadian amp in Australia. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Bryston-4B-NRB-stereo-Duel-mono-Power-amplifier-Last-one-/172809475251?hash=item283c3f54b3:g:~esAAOSwT5xZTJae

White van amplifier "Eklipsch" http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Power-Amplifier-/272691879296?hash=item3f7db3dd80:g:7koAAOSwOVpXVRs~

Of course, my only other point in this thread which is relevant is that not all valves are equal. I've lost count of the amount of gear I've tried and not liked and gotten rid of. It's part of the fun of the hobby. For some people the appearance of gear plays into it, some people don't have a choice. The underlying statement really was "the way it looks doesn't affect the function." To bring this back on track. I tried and liked and got rid of an AMC CVT-3030. It's a nice sounding amp with EL34s. The problem with the AMC amps is their complexity there should be no reason why valves should be soldered on a PCB. To undo that and fix all the other issues (overheating) is more difficulty than what it is worth to own that amp. I'm going to leave it here, as I said previously, we're getting a long way from EL34s and KT88s. I would have been happy to leave it there, it just seems that people take it as not only a predilection, but also a right to be both truculent and offended at the same time if they don't agree with what someone says on an internet forum.

That comment you have highlighted in particular is meant to make you think. If you want to be offended that is a personal choice of externalising something that is written on the screen. There is no malice in my comments its meant to make you think about it. The crux of it is that there is a whole bunch of later day valve converts that care more about the fact that something is "shiny" rather than functional. Lets think about that for a second, I couldn't care less what sized valves I have in my amp or what they look like from an aesthetic perspective because it does nothing functional. If I wanted to be offensive I'd say something like "you're like a moth attracted to a halo at night" but I didn't say that and you're trivially offended by a whole bunch of nothing.

They look cool, but there is a myriad of factors involving having open valves including safety related issues with high voltage devices. In the end I don't care so much for what my equipment looks like, but how it all sounds. The thing with the valve revival is that some people seem to prefer what an amp looks like rather than what it sounds like. If you want something that looks shiny, you might as well get one of those shiny Chinese amps that are actually just solid state amps but use the valves as glorified light bulbs.

My obsession with vintage is a personal preference, there is something to be said for having vintage components. I'm not expecting you or anyone else to be able to "get it." To be honest I've become a bit of a technological luddite. Despite the pejorative, I like old things for the sake of them being old things. As to whether you can get them to sound as good as new things, I'm sure you are aware about the fact that you can get an amp recapped and rewired. There is not so much of an issue as with solid state amps, you don't have to worry about what types of FETs or OP amps you want to use. With only 15watts a side I'm still pushing out up to 90db in a 12foot room if I want it with an 87db speaker so its not really a matter of having a problem with gain, I was just saying that a 12AU7 or 12AT7 will have less gain and if you already have a low power amplifier you might run into an issue where you don't have enough gain at all. You just have to think about what types of valves you want to roll, what I am experimenting with at the moment is 12AX7s and there is a long history of other people following down this pathway so its neither wrong nor right. We are getting a long way from what the original topic was though.

I'm aware of the 12AT7 and 12AU7 which are lower gain versions of the 12AX7 the general problem with 12AT7s and 12AU7s is that they don't as a whole when used in application go very loud by comparison, which is fine if you can live without that in application. In theory you would get a bit cleaner sound than a 12AX7. The general problem is making this work in a high power output amp. There is a higher power version of my Pioneer SA-400 but it, itself uses even more valves to get there. Even so you may or may not be enamored with an amp that's a bit of "what's the point why did I bother to go with valves anyway?" type of experience if you really do like warmer amps. Everybody is different but my consensus would be that unless you were using a lot of them, which don't get me wrong, you could do, you wouldn't be getting enough power out of them to make them useful as anything other than a valve preamp or headphone amplifier. If I were more serious and wanted to play with this lineage further I would source a Pioneer SA-81 which is much more functional and will play nice with low efficiency speakers. It looks the same except its bells and whistles version. It gives you 40watts instead of 15. It uses 4x 12AX7s again but then it uses 4x7868s and 2x6AN8s. The problem is finding one. The one you want which was the Japanese valve powered version would likely have to sourced online through somewhere like Yahoo Auctions Japan. They have the same plate as the western SA-810 but they went and put a solid state amplifier in the box instead when they sold it in the west, so ones like this below are best to avoid. Considering none of these have sold recently in the west in the last few years its hard to guage what its worth but I'd put one in the $800 price range and I'd be happy to pay it if you wanted that sort of sound.

Not all tubes are created equally I am currently using a set of 12AX7s and 6BM8s which together are incredibly detailed and bright. I haved also used the EL84 which is a bit like two EL34s together, and I have also used an EL34 in an AMC CVT-3030 (from the people who made the NAD3020 but with valves). This was in my lineup of amplifiers for a short period also. My experience is that the EL34 and EL84 do have what you would consider a typical sound which is very rich and smooth. The combination I am using of 12AX7s and 6BM8s in my current Pionner is incredibly detailed and bright and make low frills live studio recordings such as Fleetwood Mac's self titled album, and female vocalists such as Norah Jones and Melody Gardot come alive. Thats before putting on classical and jazz music. If you believe in the "rich warm" hype you wouldn't believe it was a valve stage. It produces an incredible clean sound which is a little bit overpowering when you keep hearing what you would consider the "traditional" valve sound. But 12AX7s were also used in the smaller Fender silver face preamps such as the twin reverb out of the 1960s (off the top of my head) and other similar amps. Its not uncommon to have a valve amp that can produce a decent clean sound.

Well, I could do worse, but not much worse for $400. I don't spend lots of money on hi-fi gear anymore and I like a good challenge. For me my stereo at the moment is purely play money and see what I can do with stuff other people would discredit as being painful to use today. The point really is to get something so that I can biamp my subwoofer properly, which would also fix the lean issue. This would do the trick for not much money and has enough preouts and a volume knob to play with and its just up the road from where I live. It would make the whole issue with playing with two amps in the one system much more manageable. It has already been well services apparently by the current owner, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. The issue is even whether or what it is worth playing with or not. To be fair when I have a set of Rogers exports sitting on my desk currently as a set of play toys there is not much tone to be had, which can be a majorly boring experience sometimes. The only real purpose this would serve is actually dealing with the lack of frequency response below 80hz of the Rogers (which is to be expected from a set of near field speakers) and to do it properly rather than a hack job of just plugging things into my amp where they're not supposed to be. I did think about just using the tape out from my amp, but really this removes the one factor that is actually worth having and that's a volume (gain) pot between both amps so you don't have to futz about to make it work. I don't play with tone pots unless of course they are in the case of valve amps, actually tone pots that serve some sort of effect. I wouldn't be using it as a preamp, no use destroying what I have now which is quite a flat sound. This whole experiment wouldn't really serve any other purpose. My experience with OP amps is not current by any standards, I stopped playing with "modern" OP amps by and large in the 1980s. I've gone back to having tube amps, I prefer things this way. I was just thinking of a way to cut corners without buying something more expensive to do the job. The full schematics are here... but I'm sure you already downloaded them. Taking a good look at that the 4560DD sits somewhere in the tone section. Problem is I'm a bit blind to all the lines on schematics and everything begin to look a bit the same to me, at the same time I do have a very mild case of dyspraxia (mostly to do with handwriting and following lines in books) so concentrating on things like for long enough makes everything look like its written in Chinese to my brain. For my purpose it would achieve something close to what I want to do. https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/denon/pra-1000.shtml

The tighter you go with your frequency on your low pass filter the tighter your bottom end will be, the wider you go the more flubery it will be as a generalisation with an average woofer of course (not all woofers are created equal). Of course you need speakers that can actually crossover at those frequencies otherwise you're going to end up with a weird hump between having enough bass and not. Despite what people imply crossovers are more easy to set up than what one would assume. It really shouldn't be that difficult to get it near right with your own ears with a fairly modest understanding of what frequencies look like and sound like. My sub can cater for something like 200hz, and down to 25hz. Of course I would rarely need the 200hz side of the frequency curve unless I were dealing with a horribly inefficient driver with not much in the way of mid bass. With a set of book shelfs of some repute (Rogers Export monitors) I have my low pass filter set up on my Onkyo woofer set to 85hz, which is a little more than where they naturally peter out. You can get a good idea of what this looks like by looking at the specifications of your speakers (or you can just do it by ear) I don't profess to have golden ears but its really not that difficult. The caveat is I'm listening to music though. Moofees are a bit different, you might want more shake, rattle and roll and more of that cinematic, shake the house foundations effect. I just want punch. For me a sub woofer should be unobtrusive and not noticeable, it should just produce a nice thwack to my stereo set up. Everyone has different intentions and ways of hearing things. For you, you may want a bit more of a roll off on your subwoofer to allow for rumble. As to encoding it really depends on a lot of things, its generally best to set it to something "auto" and let the encoding on the disc (or digital source) work itself out for itself. If you're source your playing requires a specific encoding it will select it itself.

This is an incredibly vague query. More information is needed before any of us can give you a solid response.

I have a sub in a box which I can attach to my amp. The problem is this kind of setup going from a line out without a crossover in between is far from ideal. Changing to a more modern AVR is an option, but when you've headed down the pathway of vintage tube audio its also far from ideal. The initial idea was to find a suitable vintage crossover that could handle the low pass filtering so I could use whatever I wanted to but they are either expensive or rare as the proverbial rocking horse poop on the ground if they do come up. I am looking at a vintage Denon preamp with two line outs that would resolve a lot of the issue and give a central volume control and would work with my sub in a box, HT subwoofer I've got laying around. It would give me central volume control at least if I added that in the loop and I wouldn't have to worry about constantly adjusting the gain on both amps, but it doesn't give you the freedom to later add X driver instead of Y which is the pain in the arse when you begin to go about thinking building your own setup at home vs a DIY install in your car for example. Trying to do this with vintage components can be a bit like fighting against Muhammad Ali with one hand tied behind your back though.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm trying to break out of having X set of speakers for Y purpose. There are a lot of good speakers that don't provide much below 80hz, such as my current Rogers Export Monitors. It would be nice to be able to build something custom that can actually do a little better than my current book shelfs.

The 12AU7 is a much lower gain, lower distortion tube than most of its like counterparts which accounts for what your seeing. But while The 12AU7 has a lower gain factor this is the whole picture. If the tube is producing enough gain that you find it suitably loud enough to listen to then the gain factor is not really relevant. It just becomes a factor of whether you like the sound of one tube over the other. The 12AU7 is a cleaner sounding more bright tube than its counterparts such as the 12AX7 which has more distortion and gain. In the sense of the example I've given, there's no problem from the standpoint of the maximum power ratings to swap a 12AU7 for a 12AX7. It will however significantly alter the sound of your amplifier. It just depends if you like the difference or not, or more fully whether you like the difference and can put up with the lower overall power output of the 12AU7.

I'm not confusing the RIAA accuracy. I'm saying when you start using monitors as opposed to hifi speakers on what is a fairly neutral amp to begin with then everything can begin to sound a bit flat. This has nothing to do with the quality of components rather than the type of components being used. The problem really isn't the quality of the gear (although there is much better) the problem really is more so this. This is the problem I have right now. The more I think about it the more I want to get new speakers. Flat is not always the best for home listening.

Its hard to get a swing away or miss and strike out answer to this. I have the opportunity to purchase one of these for a non-extortionate price. I'm just wondering whether its worth playing with these 1980s era operational amps. It does nothing without an amplifier behind it. Apparently they have a very warm and musical sound for a Bipolar OP Amp/FET based amp I am unable at this point to source much information to work out anything much at all about the µPC741C (NEC) OP amp in this configuration. It's possibly a variant of the very common 741 series OP amp which would make it quite dated, but without understanding exactly what it is it's hard to tell. I'm looking for something that could compliment my valve amplifier quite substantially as its quite lean. I'm erring towards picking it up, but I'm just wondering if anyone had any first hand ideas. Relevant specs here: Frequency response: 10Hz to 100kHz THD: 0.002% Gain: 63.5dB (MC), 35.6dB (MM) Input sensitivity: 0.1mV (MC), 2.5mV (MM), 150mV (line) Signal to noise ratio: 77dB (MC), 90dB (MM), 105dB (line) Output: 150mV (line), 1V (Pre out), 10V (Pre out Max) Cheers.

My only complaint is that now I have everything flat through my Pioneer SA-400, and Rogers Export monitors as well as a Technics SL-D2 with an Ortofon OM20 cart, I'm just thinking there is nothing much to adjust. This gets me interested in looking at getting a preamp for when I do want something that is coloured. Eventually if everything is flat you don't get much of a kick in the pants and sometimes you feel like you want to hear a sub bass kick every once in a while. So now I'm searching for a complimentary preamp and some other speaker options for when I want a different sound.

Yep, most people wouldn't know what to do with a 30band EQ though.

Might as well just use a 10band parametric EQ if you want real tone control. I keep trying to get tone out of my current export monitors, they really don't have much to give.

Better not say anything negative about Led Zep. If I want to feel like I'm actually sitting in the studio next to a band though Fleetwood Mac's self titled album is where I am at.

It may well have done, actually Jager and the members of Led Zeppelin came to fame in the same area. As the Yard Birds they were initially dismissed out of hand by what they had on the table and by the public. What came later in the studio sessions was a revelation. http://teamrock.com/news/2014-10-31/beatles-and-stones-dismissed-led-zep-debut

The whole basis of the point was that it was not recorded under a professional contract. In fact the manager of the band at the time paid for the studio time. Whether that was later in Mick Jager's van, or earlier. Sometimes you're told things that don't quite add up. The reality of it all was that Led Zepelin 1 was not recorded under a contract with Atlantic. It may have been recorded in a studio, but what you said was just as factually incorrect as anything I've said thus far. That's the whole box and dice affair.

Excuse the urban legend. It was a few years later at Headley Grange... in the Jager Van, the fact it did happen is neither here nor there.