"John, it's about the Melos…
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Days passed, and the sound got even better! The bass settled into a nice, tight groove, and the overall sound just kept getting more open and relaxed. But above all, the adjective I kept coming back to was clear. The speaker placement was far from optimum, and the gear wasn't sitting on spiked steel Audiophile-Approved racks; Allah forgive me, I was even using a single-box Japanese CD player!!!!! I tried to remind myself that the Melos was a headphone amplifier, not a preamp, but the bedroom system sounded so good I gave JA a call to tell him about my find.
Comparing the direct sound of the Theta with its sound when heard through the Melos (as well as the extra 1m of Kimber KCAG between the Theta and the Melos), I was hard pressed to hear any significant differences between the two. OK, so maybe the bass was very slightly less tight in the lowest two octaves through the Melos. And the midbass acquired a bit of added warmth compared to the direct connection, which I actually preferred to the relatively leaner sound of the Theta all by its lonesome. I should stress, though, that these differences were very slight; the Melos is very, very…
The first thing that struck me about the Melos's preamp performance was the utter clarity, the clear sense of ease throughout the entire frequency range. I know it sounds like I'm not being that critical, but the Melos just doesn't seem to have any problems that you can point to and say, "Ah-HA! There's a weak spot!" Instead, I found myself listening to record after record, CD after CD, saying "Ah-HA! Now, what was I trying to listen for again? Aw nuts, I wanna hear '1983: A Merman I Should Turn To Be' float through the room one more time!"
As for the minute differences I heard between…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: class-A hybrid tube/FET headphone amplifier/line stage. Voltage gain: 19dB. THD: 0.07% at 1kHz, 1V output. Polarity: non-inverting. Frequency response: 15Hz-200kHz, +0, -1dB. S/N ratio: 85dB ref. full output. Input impedance: 100k ohms. Output impedance (line): 0.5 ohms. Maximum output (headphones): 3.5V.
Dimensions: 19" W by 17" D by 3.5" H. Weight: 12 lbs.
Price: $995 in silver finish, $1095 in black (1992). Approximate number of dealers: 17 (1992).
Manufacturer: Melos Audio Inc., 723 Bound Brook Rd., Dunellen, NJ 08812 (1992). Melos…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
I bought myself a Melos headphone amplifier after hearing it drive Sennheiser HD560 Ovations (footnote 1) to perfection at the 1991 Summer CES. I was in need of something of quality to do monitoring with while making live recordings, and it was only when I found myself temporarily without a preamplifier capable of driving long cables that I tried it as a line stage. To say that I was astonished at how sweet yet neutral this inexpensive unit sounded in this application would be an understatement! Perhaps instruments and voices are a trace more forward in the…
These distortion measurements were all taken from the front-panel ¼" 'phone jacks. Very similar results were obtained from the rear RCA jacks when they were loaded with pure resistive loads ranging from 600 ohms to 100k ohms. Corey notes above that the line outputs are not able to source high currents; as an experiment, I hooked up the Sennheisers to the RCA outputs and fed the Melos with the same 100mV, 50Hz signal. The output spectrum is shown in fig.6. Even though the Sennheisers don't drop below 200 ohms, the Melos is sweating to drive them from its line outputs, as witnessed by the huge…
John Atkinson followed up on the SHA-1 in July 1994 (Vol.17 No.7):
The main comparison preamplifier for my review of the McCormack TLC-1 and YBA 2 preamplifiers was the Melos headphone amplifier used as a line-stage. (As well as adding a third pair of inputs, Melos has made some component and wiring changes to the SHA-1 which have worried some readers that its sound might have changed. Comparing my 1991-vintage machine with a newer sample revealed, if anything, a slight improvement in clarity. Don't worry 'bout it.)
Via its CD inputs, the YBA 2's low frequencies were tight and…
"Hi, Jonathan," Bob Matthews began his e-mail to "Fine Tunes" (matthewsr@hqamc-exchg.army.mil). "I enjoy reading your column every month, and enjoy hearing from other people about some of their cheap tweaks!"
I snapped off a spiffy salute. Nothing like some positive feedback to make my day. Bob had a good cleaning tweak of his own to share, but you've got to be careful and gentle—which leaves me and most of you out!
It seems Bob purchased a big projection TV and a DVD/CD player, and was knocked over when he tried the player in his main system. It sounded so much better than his…
With the new power and furniture arrangements in my multichannel room, I've begun to reexamine all the other things that affect system performance, including power conditioning and signal cables. However, I could not get my wife to accept the presence in that room of an ASC Sub Trap, which lifted my Paradigm Servo-15 subwoofer to eye level. Not that I protested the Trap's departure all that much—at that height, Trap and sub partly blocked direct radiation from my rear left speaker. But I felt its absence immediately, as my system returned to the usual somewhat boomy, overly punchy bass. The…
As expected, setup was a breeze; I was enjoying the DV-79 in minutes. Its two-channel CD sound was immediately discernible as distinct from that of the Sony SCD-XA9000ES and Denon DV-5900, with which it shared the rack. While the sounds of the other machines vary around a common character of full bass extension, presence, and good details all the way up into the high frequencies, the Arcam had a lighter, more diaphanous sound. Playing the CD layer of Ivan Fischer and the BFO's hybrid SACD recording of Rachmaninoff's Symphony 2 (Channel Classics CCS SA 21604), the DV-79 presented a wide,…