Congratulations, it can be a long process getting a system to sing.
This is true. A lot of trial and error.
Last night I had the opportunity to really crank the system for several hours, playing a variety of albums from The Rolling Stones, U2, 311, David Bowie, Sting, Jimmy Buffet, some original soundtracks, and a few others.
I wanted to push the system and was playing these tracks at louder than normal levels than I would ever normally do. After about an hour the top of the amp was getting decently warm to the touch, so it was getting a good workout for sure. It's a good thing I bought those 10" rack extensions instead of using the stock 8.25" ones that came with the rack. It would have left about a half inch of air space above the amp. With these longer extensions (and cross braces), I have nearly 2 inches of clearance there. Plenty of breathing room.
One thing that stood out immediately was the completely relaxed, unstrained, non-fatiguing sound, especially on the top end. Crisp and airy without ever being bright, harsh or brash. Just as composed, controlled and effortless as one would want out of their system. And I had the system running for nearly four hours straight like this, so if the amp was going to shut down due to heat or over-current or some other thing that electrostats like to punish amps with, it was going to do it now. I'm glad to report that it never did. It just kept truckin' along like it was nothing. And system tonality remained the same whether the passages were quiet or loud. It simply got quieter or louder, never becoming hard or brittle sounding, compressed or congested.
Another trait of this amp is it's ability to pull out inner details and space/depth. These are very familiar albums that I have listened many times over the years, and most of them within the past couple of months/weeks as I use some of them as test tracks. Last night, I heard new things that I never knew were in these recordings before, such as soft voices way off to one side (that sound like they probably shouldn't be there), very light, distant triangles ringing, two guitars playing in unison when I always thought it was only one, more apparent rattling of the wires on snare drums when the snares aren't even being used, something somewhere in the recording venue rattling way off to the far left, well outside the boundaries of my room.
Oh, one last thing to mention... With The Rolling Stones, Bridges to Babylon... On the last track, "How Can I Stop", the last 20 seconds or so of that song, there's a bunch of cymbals crashing and smashing all over the place for an extended period of time, about 10 or 12 seconds straight. With all of the amps and all of the speakers I have played this song on, I always had to turn the volume down considerably when this part came up because it is just way too loud and way to bright, shrilly and downright painful, not to mention the concern of blowing tweeters or amps. Even with these Martin Logan's, this passage would be way to bright and shrilly.
Well I am extremely happy to say that last night, with this amp, none of that happened. I never touched the volume once, and this was the very first time ever that I was able to hear this part in all its glory. Not once did it become brash or harsh or painful or the like. I was so shocked at this I played the last two tracks over again. Completely amazed that this section of the recording was so tamed, controlled and detailed without any of the nasty side effects.
I know it seems that I'm blowing this amp to some kind of giant killer bargain amp, but that's not the case at all. I've had plenty of different, a lot more expensive, just as powerful if not more powerful amps in the past, some of which paired with these very speakers. But in this system combination, I have never heard these speakers sound better. And the best part, this amp barely cost me $700! :celebrate008_2: I figured I didn't have anything to lose at such a low price. This time around, it paid off.
I know there are much more capable amplifiers out there, but I would have to shell out a whole heck of a lot more money (probably close to 10x as much) to get anything worth the improvement.
