Please Help me selecting the appropiate Tube amplifier

I hope you are not buying new socks for the stuffing :D.

On serious terms, hearty congratulations! For the last few months, there have been so much discussion on Lyrita in our forum and also because of their very reasonable prices, I feel I got to listen to them, if you allow. At the same time my invitation to you stands and perhaps you can also give your impressions on my system, although currently (as stated earlier) I do not have a funstional TT.

About the boominess: I thought you get boominess in smaller rooms, but your room is large. From your earlier pictures of the room, it seems you may not have too much stuff in the room other than the snooker table. Do you have long thick curtains and stuff? Some room treatment may be necessary to absorb some of the undesired reflections and reverberations.

Regards

Hello Asit,
yes its a great relief to be able to finally put things together. You are more than welcome to visit me whenever you wish. Just pm me. Regarding the room and the sound I am also planning to get some professional advice from a sound guru and do some treatment. Lets see how it shapes up. I do have long thinck curtains in the room since the wall side opposite the speakers is entirely window.It covered with thick curtains. I will also try and definitely make to your house at some point and have an impression about your system.
Thanks,
Mahiruha.
 
mahiruha,

do post a detailed review when you listen for a while! make sure a pool ball doesn't hop off the table and land on the tubes!!!

regards

Hello Steven,
thanks for introducing me to this wonderful option for music. Listening to vinyl through this system is a sheer joy even with my elementery TT with very basic cartridge. I defintely have to upgrade my cartridge to ortofon 2m Red.Yep its a valid point the snooker balls are really hard and and they can easily break the tubes so I have to be careful that the balls do not jump from the table. Fortunately unlike pool jump shots are not played in snooker and its foul if somebody plays it. My real worry is my inquisitive niece who is only 3.5 year old but she has to know about everything. The tube amp is well within reach of her. :)
Thanks,
Mahiruha.
 
Hello Asit,
yes its a great relief to be able to finally put things together. You are more than welcome to visit me whenever you wish. Just pm me. Regarding the room and the sound I am also planning to get some professional advice from a sound guru and do some treatment. Lets see how it shapes up. I do have long thinck curtains in the room since the wall side opposite the speakers is entirely window.It covered with thick curtains. I will also try and definitely make to your house at some point and have an impression about your system.
Thanks,
Mahiruha.

Thanks Mahiruha. I am itching to come to your place and have a listen. However, it's probably better to restrain myself a bit and wait for at least a week for things to settle and burn in. Some speakers do need a long burn in. Did Viren mention soemthing about burn-in times for his equipments, especially the speakers?

On the other hand, my system is more or less settled. I am just awaiting the arrival of the speaker stands. But even without that, it's okay and you can come and visit me any time in the evenings or in the weekend.

We should have some PM communication.

Regards.
 
Hello guys,
its almost 2.5 half weeks after I have my new Lyrita system in place. Last saturday I had a long session of 4 hours of continious listening of various kind of music. I really enjoyed it but when I i was listening to it on sunday I experienced a remarkable change in its performence. I guess this is what we call break in. Now I have started to realize the true capabilities of this system. This particular thing happened when I was listening to tracks of the movie Saathiya. This song chup ke se I liked so much that I listened to it 4 times. The details are remarkable. I guess I started to like it so much that I have started searching for my old cds just to test them how well they sound now. Each of those songs I used to listen now sounds really good and they have become much more enjoyable. The sound stage and separation of instrument is amazing. The vocals are very lively. The initial boomyness has diissapeared revelaing a lot more detals. Kudos to viren and thanks to forum members for suggesting this wonderful piece of equipment.
Thanks,
Mahiruha.
 
Hi Mahiruha,
The amount of joy briming from your posting is really enjoyable. I am yet to have my system. May be just 1-2 months away. Hope to enjoy the same way like you once they properly burn-in. I don't know I may ultimately take my system from the same stable. May be only one change - Amity instead of Harmony.

Cheers
 
Hello guys,
this Sunday I also had a session of Lyrita at my place with Asit. It was really nice to first time iteract with somebody in person from this forum. We listened to variety of music of my choice and lot of CDs that Asit bring along with him. He really liked the lush sound produced by the 6c33c and harmony one combo. The tonal quality produced by the system were really impressive. but the way the speakers are placed in my room it is creating lot of secondary refelctions so Asit couldn't find the clarity that he is used to with his leben. We played lot of indian classical music and we both were convinced that it is a very good system for playing those.We concluded our session by playing some vinyls.It was quite obvious that quality of sound produced by vinyls is really magical as compared to cds specially old songs. It was a very good learning experience for me.
Thanks.
 
Hi Mahiruha,

Thanks for hosting me at your place and giving me a taste of the Lyrita system. I'll post my ignorant impressions later tonight or tomorrow as I am just going out right now (very unusual for me) and won't be free before late tonight. Just saw your post and wanted to write a quick reply.

Regards.
 
Hi all,
This is an account of my experience with the Lyrita system (6c33c SET amp, Harmony 1 single driver speakers and the Lync preamp with a phono-stage) at Mahiruha's place. The sources were a CA 540D v2 and a Project Debut 3 TT and the cables were all from Lyrita, I believe. The system is placed in a fairly large room (about 12' by 20') and the speakers are placed on the shorter wall about 7' from each other and 1' away from the wall. The Harmony 1 speakers are rear ported and Mahiruha has put some socks into the opening to control bass boominess. BTW, the room was dominated by Mahiruha's huge snooker table which left not much more than walking room around the table. The listening position is across the room on the other side of this huge table. I must say I underestimated the size of the table by a large extent and as soon as I saw it I knew that there would be no reasonable imaging possible with so much diffraction around the room. In addition the room is closed with lots of hard and smooth walls with semi-glossy paint on it and very little absorbing material except for about 5% wall area covered by curtains.

I went to hear the system with no particular expectation except that I was looking forward to a pleasant evening with some good music (the same kind of mood I am usually in when I go to a concert). I carried about 10 CDs with me. Let me just say that I have never heard a full range speaker or a SET amp before.

To name a few CDs I brought along, we played: 1) Talking Timbuktu (Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder), 2) Imagine (Joan Baez), 3) Best collection (Secret Garden), 4) Live in Stuttgart (Pt Jasraj), 5) Raga Maru Bihag (Prabha Atre), 6) Raga Basant Mukhari (Ali Akbar Khan). Except for CD #5, all other CDs were recorded, mastered and pressed in abroad and with very good to excellent quality. Even the Prabha Atre CD is one of relatively better ones made in India.

At the end Mahiruha played 2 LPs: 1) Raga Tilak Shyam by Ravi Shankar, 2) Tagore songs by Hemanta Mukherjee.

Now to the sound. The system had no problem reaching deafening levels of loudness. I think Mahiruha's normal and preferred level is way louder than what I would ever use. Actually I had to ask Mahiruha to turn down volume several times.

The sound was very very full-bodied and absolutely uninhibited, very lush indeed. Perhaps a bit too warm for my taste (whether the speakers or the amp responsible for it I do not know). The sound has an addictive and euphonic character to it. The dynamics (both macro and micro) was also very very good. I guess the totality of the above is generally called the SET+full-range-speaker sound that people get emotionally attached to. It is a special sound, for sure. However, I can also see why everybody may not like it to the fullest extent because it may be a bit too overwhelming for some. Personally I may like it just a bit tamed, of course a very very personal opinion and I am absolutely far from an expert and I apologize profusely for freely expressing my views if it does not match the views of the experts. To use an analogy with photography, I found the sonic characters to be like a photograph with a bit of an over-saturation in the colours, so it can be very artistic and inviting with certain nature landscapes, however, may not suit everybody's taste perfectly.

But the system lacked considerably in clarity. The bass was still boomy and a bit uncontrolled even with the socks put inside the rear port. This is something I did not like at all. I am used to very very clear and a mountain-spring-like transparent sound with clear separation of all instruments and vocals. I knew with so much diffraction and also undamped reflections, the imaging would suffer seriously but I think the clarity also suffered. Although I cannot be 100% sure that all this is solely due to the room conditions, I am sure, judging by other people's reports on these systems and other praiseworthy qualities of the system that the room contributed very heavily to this lack of clarity.

Mahiruha had the Lyrita Pre hooked up to one of the inputs of the SET integrated amp. He held the volume knob of the integrated at a fixed position while he controlled the volume by adjusting the volume knob of the pre. Somehow, in my very ignorant view, this may beat the purpose of a SET design. Towards the end of the session, I asked Mahiruha to keep the volume of the pre at a minimum and just control the volume through the integrated. I do not know (especially because we did not do it for a considerable length of time) if it was my psychology, but the sound this way was clearer and a bit less lush, but I would take this over the other arrangement always.

There is one other strange observation I have to report. While changing CDs, once I was standing close as the tray came out, and clearly heard whispering sounds from the speakers during the tray movement. I made Mahiruha also listen to the sound. (He also made me hear a slight humming sound from the tubes, but to hear it you have lean over the tubes very close. This is also new to me. There is some electric problem, I am sure). Experts, please help Mahiruha. Not proper earthing? Something wrong with the transport? Or is it usual with some CDP transports. I may have read things like that on the net, cannot quite remember.

Mahiruha is a gentle, very humble and a soft-spoken young man and naturally a very kind host. I found out he is a grandson of a very famous Bengali literary personality (one of my favourites, actually when I was in high school I wrote a script after a short story written by his grandfather and wanted to film it, but obviously could not do it because of lack of funds with parents not obliging). I truly believe he has procured a very special system (not everybody's cup of tea though), but people who would like it would swear by it. I liked very much the overall musicality of the system, there is no doubt about it, although I 'd like some of the lushness to be tamed a bit (a personal preference only). The highs were not sparkling (probably a characteristics of a full range) but I did not mind it that much and bass was a bit boomy (definitely a lot of it caused by the room set up), but the mids were very palatable and overall I have to say I liked the openness of the sound from the speakers more than I thought I would. My speakers at home, although very clear, neutral and resolving does not have this signature of extreme openness (some of that also due to poor placement of my speakers deep inside a cabinet, hope to improve on it with stands that are being built in an adiabatic process, so do not quite know when they will be done). Although I like the whole presentation of the Lyrita system to be a bit more restrained, as I have said a few times in this report I liked very much the lack of inhibition in the sound (for the lack of a more appropriate word). BTW, I forgot to mention that all the expected signature and fluidity of a TT as a source was very much in evidence even with the stock cartridge and pin of the Debut III.

I'll post more if I find I have missed or forgotton something worth mentioning.

Regards.
 
Hi Asit & Mahiruha
I am no expert but just telling you my experience. I have DNM bookshelves as my speakers paired with a Cosmic amp. The BS are quiet small and rear ported.
When i keep them 1 ft away from the side wall and back wall the bass actually gets doubled or tripled and sounds too boomy. I have to keep them atleast 3ft away from the sidewalls for the bass to be sound reasonable. This was same for other unbranded Chinese FS i had
So maybe Mahi can try shifting the speakers a little more away from the side and back walls and see what happens
 
Hello Asit,
thanks for very nicely putting your experience into words. I could get a clear idea what are things to look for in a system when it comes to an amplifier and a speaker combo. It is good to know that you also didn't like the boomyness and at this point of time I think it is the most important factor that I will need to address. As suggested by rikhav I will try and move the speakers 3 ft away from the wall and see what is happening. Another thing that I am also bit confused about is the lack of clarity.In my thinking there can be three reasons for that.
1) The extra boomyness is hiding the details.
2) The CA 540dV2 needs an upgrade perhaps its not a good match
3) Lot of secondary refelctions caused by the room strucutre and the presence of the snooker table.
I will try and address 1 and 2 and see if improvement in performence can be achieved. As per your advice I will also try and procure a longer IC and connect the cd player directly with the amplifier.
I guess it is quite a tough ask to make the co existance posssible of a good stereo system , a ht system and snooker table in same room without sacrificing each other's performence. I really thank you for taking the trouble of coming over and have a look at this system and putting in words your observations.
Thanks.
 
Hi Mahiruha,

Please do not take any drastic measures. Do one little thing at a time. Having a setero and a HT system in the same room is not a big problem. Many people have it that way. The snooker table is one major problem in your case and it's not going to go anywhere else from that room.

There is absolutely no need to change your CDP at this point. It's a decent enough player to give you more clarity than you have at the moment. Just try to connect it directly to the integrated SET. For the TT obviously you need the phono stage, and so in that case you have to involve the preamp in some way (either connecting it to the power section of your AVR or the power section of the SET integrated if possible).

What Rikhav suggested is identical to what I was also suggesting that day to you, that is, to move the speakers a bit forward. You should try this out on an experimental basis. It may also not work in your favour. The more you move your speakers from the wall, the better it is, for a rear ported speaker especially, however, at the same time the closer it is to your snooker table. So, you have to try this out and see what happens to the sound. Hopefully, you can work out an optimal position for your speakers.

Now I am a complete novice when it comes to suggesting improvements in room acoustics. I am not in favour of spending a lot here. I hope somebody more knowledgeable than me can suggest to some inexpensive, hassle-free (easily implementable) and quick ways to improve the room acoustics.

Regards.
 
Hello Mahiruha,

As Asit has suggested, connect the CD player directly to the SET amplifier. You will gain clarity that way. Use the preamp as a phono preamp only, connecting its output to one of the line inputs in the SET amp. So, in effect, the integrated SET amp becomes your control amp.

Room problems are difficult to diagnose from afar, but it seems you have bass resonance modes building up in your room. That is causing the boominess, and clouding up the midrange. The only remedy is to play with the positioning of the speakers, to minimize the modes. Obviously, you have limited movement here. Can you try placing the speakers along the adjoining wall, so that they are facing the other dimension of the room? Or, one along each adjacent wall, for them to face the diagonal of the room? See if that helps.

Regards,
Viren
 
Hi Mahiruha,

Please do not take any drastic measures. Do one little thing at a time. Having a setero and a HT system in the same room is not a big problem. Many people have it that way. The snooker table is one major problem in your case and it's not going to go anywhere else from that room.

There is absolutely no need to change your CDP at this point. It's a decent enough player to give you more clarity than you have at the moment. Just try to connect it directly to the integrated SET. For the TT obviously you need the phono stage, and so in that case you have to involve the preamp in some way (either connecting it to the power section of your AVR or the power section of the SET integrated if possible).

What Rikhav suggested is identical to what I was also suggesting that day to you, that is, to move the speakers a bit forward. You should try this out on an experimental basis. It may also not work in your favour. The more you move your speakers from the wall, the better it is, for a rear ported speaker especially, however, at the same time the closer it is to your snooker table. So, you have to try this out and see what happens to the sound. Hopefully, you can work out an optimal position for your speakers.

Now I am a complete novice when it comes to suggesting improvements in room acoustics. I am not in favour of spending a lot here. I hope somebody more knowledgeable than me can suggest to some inexpensive, hassle-free (easily implementable) and quick ways to improve the room acoustics.

Regards.

Hello Asit,
thanks for the suggestion. I am also a firm beliver of slow and steady school. As you have noticed there is no room left in my equipment rack so nothing new can't come in unless something old goes out.The only upgrade I am going to undertake is to change my TT stock cartridge and get the ortofon 2m red cart. I will definitely try my experimentation with speaker movement and post my impression.I am going to call viren and ask him to prepare that custom made IC once I get the measurement. Also I need to buy some new vinyls and try them out. Till now I have only been using second hand ones. Its a very interesting journey alltogether.
On a lighter note that snooker table is causing problem to the speaker's performence but these speakers helps me a great deal in the game of snooker. When i am in trouble my strategy is to put the cue ball on the table near the speakers so that my opponent finds it very hard to make a shot. :D As you have mentioned that you played pool so we should have a game of snooker someday. I am not very good but have lot of enthusiasm.
Thanks.
 
Congratulation Mahiruha on your new tube set up. I can understand why tube lovers are so passionate about how they feel, it's because somewhere music connects to their soul.
 
Hi Mahiruha

I was reading about the issues you are facing with boominess. One is to bring the speakers forward, as some have suggested - about 2 ft from the rear wall if that is possible.

The other option is placing 'bass traps' behind the speakers. I don't know if they are available in India and at what price. But I have seen pictures of people (abroad) do this to control bass reflections. Possibly somebody can make them for you. Don't kow if this option can be explored

But you seem to have a great system.

On your TT, I read you are planning to install an Ortofon Red. I recently installed a Denon 110 on my Nad 533 and it sounds wonderful.
 
A beautiful, well-constructed speaker with class-leading soundstage, imaging and bass that is fast, deep, and precise.
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