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Is fig.6 into 4 ohms or 8 ohms? The main text says one thing, but the image says another. Thanks.
Description: Two-channel SET integrated amplifier with phono stage. Tube complement: 5U4G plus two each 300B, 5687, ECC82, ECC88, and ECC83. Power output: 8Wpc into 4 ohms (6dBW) or 8 ohms (9dBW). Input impedance: 100k ohms, line; 47k ohms, phono. Input sensitivity: 240mV for full output. Channel balance: ±0.3dB. Moving magnet phono stage loading, 47k ohms, 47pF (fixed); gain, 37.3dB; input sensitivity, 10.8mV for full output; channel balance, <0.25dB; noise <1mV. Max. power consumption: 200W.
Dimensions: 18.1" (460mm) W × 8.7" (220mm) H × 20.9" (530mm) D. Weight: 65lb (29.5kg).
Finish: Fascia, anodized aluminum or black acrylic.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 3MP3-024. Manufactured in the UK.
Price: $19,300. Approximate number of US dealers: 11. Warranty: Two years, parts and labor.
Manufacturer: Audio Note Ltd., Viscount House, Units C, D & E, Star Rd., Star Trading Estate, Partridge Green, West Sussex RH13 8RA, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0)1273 830 800. Email: info@audionote.co.uk. Web: audionote.co.uk. US distributor: As above.
Is fig.6 into 4 ohms or 8 ohms? The main text says one thing, but the image says another.
It's 4 ohms. Sorry for the error. I have corrected the fig.6 caption.
John Atkinson
Technical Editor Stereophile
An embarrassing set of measurements. This is an effects box, nothing more. It’s audio alchemy, not audio engineering.
...who's dabbled in things such as this component will immediately pick up at least half a dozen specific references in Ken's review as absolutely indicative of it's musical truthfulness. They connect and it connects.
We call this direct confirmation of the form and type and the very reason they exist.
How precious of you - commenting as Bonsai, ironically - to miss every last one of them. Back to your $499 cookie-cutter import.
Is this a free service you offer, this remarkable ignorance of not just that sonic form and style but somehow too its Japanese provenance, and is there a monthly newsletter? LOL.
The component is exactly like a bonsai tree in it's meticulous parts choice and placement, and it has been clearly 'trimmed' over time to produce beauty in several definitions of the word.
But nope, just the measurements matter. lol.
I'm well qualified to comment on the Audio Note stuff - not this specific piece of equipment, but the certainly the Audio note sound. I wandered into their demonstration room at a show I was participating in and even met brand ambasadoe Vincent (I bought his record as well :) ). Its nicely made it that type of thing floats your boat, but I really failed to see what all the fuss was about.
In the other hand, I listened at length to a big Nelson Pass amplifier driving a pair of KEF's and that was stunning.
Both idiosyncratic designs (one zero global feedback, the other 'low' feedback), but only one hit the spot.
I have no problem with people selling expensive gear, but, I have a serious problem with people who diss equipment out of hand without having heard it, or who claim feedback is bad. That is fundamentally flawed in my book.
and qualify them more accurately.
Your two sentence remark comes off completely flip.
Buy your astoundingly accurate, measurement perfect but ugly and dry sounding and oh so boring Benchmark or Topping crap. Enjoy using your radio shack lamp cord speaker wire with them too.
piece of work, John A doesn't give this a thumbs down engineering wise. More importantly, you tone deaf musical genius know it all, this is all that matters: "It may not do air; instead it does flesh. As is surely clear if you read this far, I found the amplifier's rich, brawny, physical reproduction more than satisfying."
What's wrong with effects box? If that's the sound certain people want, that's what they will get. I treat audio like food, you get the flavor you want and you pay for it, however expensive if you can afford it. If you want flavorless food, that's okay too.
I like looking at measurements myself and think they are important but it is to find the kind of measurements I prefer so I don't even need to read the subject reviews with their pornographic flowery prose as they don't meant much to me. Noise would be one example the subjectivists and objectivists can agree on: the lower the better. Basically I want everything to measure well, except benign harmonic distortion as long as it's pleasing to the ears without being grossly noticeable.
Is a wonderful description for such a magical musical sounding amplifier. ;)
Fig 3: is it a square wave @1 Khz (text) or @10 Khz (graph)?
Curious: this is perhaps the worst ever measured integrated I have seen in Stereophile,... but at the same time the word's best integrated according Ken. Clearly there is something measurements are not capturing... are you listening... err.. reading, Amir?
The thing is that clown has a horde of groupies, some of his followers making as aberrant and outrageous "tests" as the one done with Hegel, as the MQA case clearly demonstrates (which was as ignorant and evil-minded as it can possibly be), with even guys as Paul Gowan citing that clown act as a "engineering" proof of the alleged faults of the format... omg...
These ASR guys are dangerous (the damage they did to MQA is immense I think), and that's the whole point they do it I guess. What a deception that even Darko put one of them with his serious, phony voice on stage recently...
That aside, I can't find any possible justification for a 8 watt amp (or should I say a less than a watt amp?) to be priced at 20K US$. I hope Stereophile or TAS remind there is also normal people and not only Musks and Brins reading their wonderful magazines.
Thousands if not millions of Boomers retiring have copious funds for an end of life system.
Many high-sens speakers can run with this amp just fine. If it is music that this generates, then damn the specs.
There is not one poster in this review response that can tell Audio Note they are full of it or implement poor engineering.
I'm not an Amir groupie myself (I prefer George and Ringo).
But since you raise the issue, the natural response, thought-experiment-wise is the question:
Do any of the Stereophile editors/writers/reviewers have groupies?
I need not provide an answer, since this question answers itself.
Former SP writers J Gordon Holt and Mikey Fremer both had groupies. (OK, I guess one has to distinguish between Fremer's groupies and his haters; that math is too complex for me.)
But no one currently associated with SP. (The one exception I would say is JA1. I don't think he has groupies, per se, decent bass player though he might be. But he is widely respected, not only here but at all the forums regularly denigrated here.)
Anyway, so one must ask oneself, why is this the case? Why are there no personalities at SP who inspire more than a "meh" level of excitement/interest/devotion?
That's a 10KHz square wave and for a tube amp it's quite decent. I would have a problem if that's 1KHz though. As long as the corners are rounding off smoothly the sound will be pleasing to the ears. Some like it and some don't. I think it's fine but I am not fine with the price tag though.
... it could replace my old Ibanez Screamer, probably my old strat would not feel the difference
I see the faithful have rushed to defend this product. Clearly I seemed to have touched a nerve.
that was simple troll-ery.
This paragraph is quite confusing:
"The phono, filament, power board, and the PSU board are all point-to-point wired in the Meishu Tonmeister," Greguras added. [Point-to-point wired boards? What does that mean? And what do they mean by power board if they also mention PSU board?] "This technique [Which technique? If they refer to "point-to-point" wiring of PCBs, how is that a means to control board material, etc?] allows us to control the board material (FR4, Tufnol, Permali), the thickness of the board material—copper or silver— [Likely trace material, not board, right?] which can be from 0.5mm to 1.2mm. We achieve solid electrical connection by twisting a wire around resistor or capacitor leads and valve bases so a board can even work without a solder. [I actually understand this, I just can't really see the point of doing this. Probably there's an explanation, would have been nice to know.] Then the components are soldered in position. We use printed circuit boards in our amplifiers up to [but not including] level 3, because it is definitely much easier to populate them; but even then, we pay special attention to a copper thickness, FR4 board thickness, and the width of the traces." [It's been already described in this very same paragraph that they pay special attention to their PCB layout, build-up and material, so this is redundant. And frankly, there's nothing extraordinary in this, it's just standard, good engineering practice, true for all high quality/high reliability electronics.] This Meishu Phono 300B Tonmeister is a level three component, with no printed circuit boards. [And yet in the photos all components are mounted on PCBs with the exception of the transformers...]
As for the overall review: Since there is one single sentence describing listening experience other than MC vinyl, the title really should read Meishu with S4 SUT, especially since that little add-on at around 6k USD constitutes a significant portion of the cost of the amplification system.
One of these days I'll see an SET review where the writer won't describe the amp as single ended class A as if there is such a thing as single ended class A or even single ended class AB. Those last two formats can not exist. Non class A SET is impossible. A single ended amp never turns off it's output device(s). If it did the amplifier would stop amplifying. An SET is class A inherently due to single ended topology.
Yes. As is much of the review. Imaginative descriptions of sound which seem to have no relationship with reality. One feels that the reviewer must have dropped acid before listening. But the component is very expensive. That must be the explanation.
...Harper, paraphrased:
Why, your imaginative descriptions of flavor have, by the blazing lights of my infallible mind-reading, no relationship with reality. Surely the imaginary crowd in my pocket agrees that the reviewer must have dropped acid before dining. But the meal is very expensive, which to my jeenyus has to be the only conceivable explanation.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, Little David.
"On the outside, the Tonmeister's facade includes four gold-plated control knobs labeled function (tuner, aux, CD1, CD2), record (source, tape), volume, and balance" and what about more Your Throat?