Lemon string

I auditioned a Schiit Bifrost this weekend. Compared to the DAC in my Emotiva umc-1 there was a pretty big difference. I did side by side, A/B'd them. The price is right on it too I'd say. Im leaning in that direction its gotten great reviews and is compared to units at far higher prices.

these are two that I think are really good from 2012 and 2013

I say for brewing the best I've had is a Chemex. It takes a bit of patience but in my opinion the best cup of coffee I've been able to make at home. I typically go with a french press though being able to just pour the water and walk away is usually easier fro me and my schedule. The key to the Chemex is to follow their instructions. I've done small boutique roaster beans all the way to good old Folgers in the Chemex and its the best with either. Super round full flavor with absolutely no bitterness.

well It was a very busy Jan for me so I am just now getting back to this thread with my review. Its been about three weeks since I first wrote on the topic. Shortly after I first installed the Aletheia crossovers I began to notice some distortion in both HF and LF which didn't seem right and had me scratching my head for a minute. After a bit of thought I suspected that it was time for new tubes. I ordered up a fresh pair of SED winged c EL34's and a new bugle boy for the amp. They arrived and I quickly installed. My hunch seemed to be right as the distortion and flabby bass is no mas, gonzo. So at this point all I can tell you is that my set up sounds the best it has. It sounds RIGHT. Music that is full and round, music with airy highs, a gorgeous mid range and a nice natural low end now fills my room. The music isn't held to any physical component, it doesn't appear to be anchored, tied or projected by any component in the room. the music hangs in the air in-between, out in front and across the room where the components sit but not coming from them directly. At this moment I am listening to "the Ultimate Demonstration Disc" from Chesky Records. I recommend it if you are interested in critical listening and tools to help one asses their system, as well as, give you a point of reference for different aspects of audio recording and reproduction. Anyway, my system sounds right on. As I listen to each track I can't hear anything that seems to be lacking or missing. Im not saying that I have achieved perfection but I am saying that my system sounds as close to perfect as it ever has. One thing that this hobby has taught me is that perfection is a journey with a destination that remains on the horizon. Thanks to Dean at Aletheia for his work, his service, his attention to detail and ofcourse for his love of the hobby and music. cheers

What amp are you using? My amp employs only one 6922 on the input side. Im finding this to sound really nice and dead quite my power tubes are el34's. I recommend looking at upscale audio's website. They offer a sonic descriptions of their tubes and offer great service.

I just got and installed an amperex 6DJ8 bugle boy for $80 and it seems to be sounding very nice.

yeah let us know how you like them and the improvement they make or not..... but I don't see that happening! I think I saw the quicksilvers you bought I was considering them myself. I ended buying a Audion sterling plus kt88 hard wired. I had just bought an older el34 12w sterling from audion so when I came across this demo model I went for it. The new one is living at my studio for afterwork jam sessions. Can't wait to hear how you like them with the cornscalas. keep us posted.

wow, those are some great deals! We're in the same hood. I'd love to hear your set up some time and get some tips on your bargaining strategies!!

NIce..... I know what you're saying, tubes will do that. Its a magical thing.

Yeah I had heard that this was going to happen. Its by far my favorite music service I've subscribed for over a year and have really been impressed. I hope it doesn't take a turn for the worst. I think the quality and selection both are really good.

So..... Friday night went to a concert, Darkside, at the Metro in Chicago. Pre concert we jammed with a new amp we got at the studio. I think that is going to be a lot of fun. Saturday night we had dinner guests, so long story short I haven't gotten much of a chance to really listen closely. Just getting the little ones to bed now so probably won't get a chance to listens at preferred volume but I'll let you know.

Dean I'd love to see them as they now live in a dark cabinet

Toolz, I'll keep you updated, I too am interested to see if there are further developments!

So I had told myself that I'd wait to post anything for a few days, in regards to the new crossovers I purchased, but I felt like the events that took place in my listening room and my ears tonight might be worth sharing. So I have a pair of 88 CW II's and decided to replace the stock crossovers. Many of you here on the forum aided in my decision by offering advice, opinions and comments when I had posted on the forum about this topic. So thank you to those that participated in that thread. Ultimately the big Thanks goes out to Dean G at Aletheia Audio as I ended up choosing to go with his services. Dean replaced the caps in my stock network with Clarity Cap ESA's a sonicap and I think a couple of mundorfs. I could be wrong on that perhaps Dean will share the specifics. As I said I had planned to wait a few days before sharing my impressions. I know that there are differing opinions on the subject of break in time so I thought to be fair to both camps I'd just wait until a reasonable amount of juice had flowed through the networks before sharing impressions and opinions on them. I've decided against that as I thought some might be interested in hearing my experience as it un folds. I came home from work and waisted no time getting them reinstalled. I listened to a fairly wide array of music last night. I started with a couple of what I consider great albums from a musical, a performance and a production level. These first two albums both featured female vocals, Madeliene Peyroux, Half the Perfect World and Patricia Barbers, Cafe Blue. The cornwalls presented the music with precision and extreme clarity. There also seemed to be more low end present than I recall with the, 25 year old, stock networks which was the initial reason I suspected they were overdue for a change. Beyond that, however, I didn't find the music to be as engaging in some strange way. It felt a bit sterile or tight. The stereo image was a bit less pronounced than what I had remembered with the stock networks. The separation of instruments wasn't as defined and overall the sound stage seemed some what compressed, a bit more of a 2d image than three dimensional. I continued to run them through there paces with music ranging from Pink Floyd's Wish you were here to Steely Dan's Cant buy a thrill to various jazz recordings and ended the night with the Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque's, 2013, Bach: double and triple concertos. I let them play all night as I went to sleep, playing classical streaming thru MOG via apple tv. Tonight, same story came home and fired up the amp and started out real mellow with Olafur Arnalds, Living Room Songs. Honestly I didn't pay much attention as I said hi to the fam and got settled in. Next I threw up Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban's Mambo Sinuendo. This album served as background music as we ate dinner. After Dinner I sat down and put Dire Straits Brother in Arms on. I've heard this album a ton of times. I see this album as a great studio album. I've heard it so many times though it doesn't really get me excited anymore out of familiarity. First track, so far away sounds good, clean and maybe a little more open than where I thought things were last night. Second track, Money for nothing, again i've heard this song so many times its hard for me to really get into it, it's one of those songs thats been played so much that it kind of becomes background music. NOT THIS TIME! Damn! where'd that come from?!? the intro literally had my heart pumping, I reached for the remote and turned it up. I wanted to hear more! After the big drum crescendo and the song really gets going I hit stop. Literally my heart was racing from the rush the music just delivered. I went and got my wife to see if she'd give me her opinion on the sound of the speakers with the new crossovers. She sat down I started to play Money for nothing. She sat there with no expression listening. Again, for me hearing the first 60 secs was like wow but I let it play for another minute until I couldn't stay silent anymore. I asked her if she thought this track sounded good. She said "I've never heard that song like that. Is that a different version? They don't play that intro on the radio." It's like the speakers are opening like a flower in bloom tonight, literally.Each track just gets a bit deeper a bit juicier. My beloved center image and sound stage is back and deeper and wider. The 3d like quality present and the music is alive and vivid in the room. I'll stop here..... I should mention that Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Give the People What They Want followed Dire Straits and was an amazing listen, again vivid. Everything thats come through tonight is sounding great and shimmering the music is palpable on night two with Aletheia Audio's rebuilt Cornwall II crossovers. Stay tuned

Tube amplifiers are nominally** more expensive than SS amps for these reasons: They are nearly all designed to use output transformers which SS amps rarely have. It's the single most expensive component in the amp. They operate at higher voltages which require higher cost capacitors. A 500V capacitor is considerably more expensive than a 50V. The components are heavier, and this increases the cost of materials for the chassis Because there are so few tubed products made (insignificant portion of the market) the special parts are made in ultra low volume, in very few factories. This raises the cost of all these parts. Ex: a single transistor can be 10-cents, compared to a single tube costing $12 for the same function. Even more dramatically, a single OpAmp for 30-cents can provide the entire front-end of an SS amp. A simple front-end for a tube amp will need two tubes at a cost of $25 and at least a couple $6 capacitors. Most SS amps can use robotics for most of the assembly. A pick and place machine can build the PC boards in 20 seconds. Tubes can't take advantage of that labor savings and most of the tube gear has to be hand soldered and wired. Labor is an enormous cost penalty in the tube amp. Manufacturing volumes are orders of magnitude lower. Sony plans production in terms of thousands of units. A tube amp might be hundreds for the most popular, and tens for the specialty brands. Low volume adds a significant cost penalty. Shipping weight is almost always higher for tubes. End user pays for all shipping, including hidden shipping like the $8 it costs to ship a output transformer to the builder. To summarize, the tube amp lies outside the main pathway of modern manufacturing. So far off the main pathway that it can be considered an arcane manufacturing process. As to the question of design simplicity there isn't too much difference between tube and SS. Both can be designed from cookbooks with almost no engineering input, and both can be so complicated as to need thousands of hours of engineering. If there is an advantage there, it is probably that SS amps can be prototyped a lot faster than tube amps. **By nominally I am excluding the very high end. At the highest end you can spend $200,000 for tube amps or SS amps. Well said

Im driving my 88 cornwall II's with a 12w class A SET El 34 amp and had the same concerns as you. I couldn't be happier with the combination, my room is a little larger than yours. Im about to purchase another amp for some tannoy super red monitors I have at my place of work. These are less efficient, than the CW's, rated at 94db and have 15" woofers so I am considering a 18w version of the amp driving my CW's, this amp uses kt88's.

I think its about being exposed to as much as you can...... solid state, tubes, chip, different pre's or source direct or whatever. Over time you'll start to figure out what sounds best to you as you will hear something different in every set up. So then the question becomes what and where does my rig/room fall short. I've changed out a couple pieces recently and honestly I wasn't sure if when I got the stuff home there would be any real difference, to the point I could justify the expense. In my case there was, its been a fun journey so far and I feel like I'm closer and closer to what I am after.

I have a 20 year old set of commercial calphalon and a collection of antique french copper. I love both but the copper is really awesome, it heats up fast and even. I also have a couple of enameled iron pieces I really like for both long cook top sessions and oven use, Fontinac and Danks.

I had tubes on my Khorns in my 20's. McIntosh 240, Marantz 8b (my fave), Harmon Kardon Citation, Scott, Dynaco Mk III, etc. They all TROUNCED the SS amps of the the day. BUT, after Dr. Matti Otala discovered that SS amps need to address Transient Intermodulation Distortion (TIM) with his paper published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, all of the solid state amps had improved by the 1980's. Back in 1977, I met Saul Marantz himself at a Hi Fi show in Detroit and spent more than my fair share of time with him. He had sold his company to Superscope of Japan and was VP of Sales/Marketing for Dahlquist. They were running tubes on the Dalquist and SOLID STATE on the outboard Subwoofer section. I asked him why? He said that tubes were great on midrange and treble with their desirable even order harmonics behavior (what you all are preferring on the Cornwalls) but he felt that any woofer section had better transient response (better motor control) with the inherent lower source impedance of transformerless Solid State Amplifiers. Also, he said it was less expensive to Bi-Amp this way, since you could get more "woofer watts" a lot cheaper, with better overall performance. Since you still have your Adcom, I would suggest you match the VOLTAGE gain of both amps somehow and split off the woofer section, so you can drive the horns with the tubes and the woofer section with the Adcom. Then you can do a post to say Saul Marantz was RIGHT!! That would be a interesting way to go for sure........... My sub, a rw12, has a 200w ss amp in it so I suppose to some extent I am sort of doing that. I have my crossover set to 50hz presently but I could walk it back up to 80hz i suppose.

??? hmmm thought more people would shout out bump

I noticed on the crites website today that Bob has a new addition to his family, a baby girl. Thought folks here might want to say congrats and send their love and best wishes.

i pulled the trigger..... see other post if interested titled "i did it. I tubed the cornwalls"

I bought a umc1 a year ago and really like it! the one I bought hadn't been updated. Luckily my neighbor is a programmer and has a pc laptop as Im a mac user. He came over and help with the update. It took him over an hour maybe two. Since then I've had zero problems with it. Interestingly enough a couple of weeks later my neighbor joined me for the emotiva road show in the chicago area. He left with a new umc 200, a upa 7 and 2 outdoor speakers.

So I got the audion sterling 12w class a amp I had posted about a few days ago. All I can say is holys$#@! We had two other couples over for new years last night. Among the crowd there were a couple of real skeptics in the room concerning that there would be a significant audible difference between the new little tube amp and my ss adcom gfa 2535 amp. So we started with the ss amp for an hour or so letting everyone get a taste of the cornwalls II, which are relatively new to my home. We then plugged in the tube amp and A/B'd the amps with a couple of tracks. My wife, the biggest skeptic in the room, couldn't believe the difference. Everyone present was pretty astonished. When we first switched from the tubes back to the ss adcom everyone looked at one another and asked what happened? whered the music go? This is what we were first listening to?? The ss got yanked real quick. Long story short Im psyched about the purchase! This is my first tube amp and I have no regrets.

all great! Love the Ken Burns Jazz series a must for any Louis A fan. That is one nice Ella & Louis, great record!