Merlin & CJ

[Marco1]

I use Premier 12's in triode, which produce about 60 watts, to drive Merlin TSM's that are less efficient than the VSM's with great success. I can assure you that your 140's will have no problem driving the VSM's. I think Merlin/CJ is a great combination. The warmth of my 12's combines very nicely with the transparency of the Merlins. Color of course is very personal but my Merlin's are Ruby Heart Red and I can also assure you that the color, fit and finish of the cabinets are exquisite.

Regards Mark

[CJinSC]

Joe, I agree completely about the holographic nature of the Signature interconnects, especially listening to well recorded female jazz singers. They usually seem to be singing about two feet beyond the middle of my den wall. I recently put Acoustic Zen Absolute Copper and Harmonic Tech Magic Link II in place of my two Magnan interconnects and while it was very clean, clear and transparent, it seemed to lack some of the warmth and ambiance the Magnans showed. Maybe if I used a whole system of AZ or HT things would be different. I hope the new Magnan speaker cables do live up to the old ones, because right now they don't seem to be substantially better than the Anticable Ref 3 I'm currently using.

[CJinSC]

Thanks for the reply Mark. Have you heard the latest VSM? I have never heard any of the Merlins, but they seem to be well regarded. Any thing that bothers you about the Merlins? The idea of placing the BAM in between my source & CT5 doesn't excite me, but it seems to not veil the soundstage according to reviews.
Regards,
John

[Marco1]

Originally Posted by CJinSC

Thanks for the reply Mark. Have you heard the latest VSM? I have never heard any of the Merlins, but they seem to be well regarded. Any thing that bothers you about the Merlins? The idea of placing the BAM in between my source & CT5 doesn't excite me, but it seems to not veil the soundstage according to reviews.
Regards,
John

John:

Never heard the VSM Masters but have listened to the prior version. I moved up from the prior version of TSMs to the Masters so I can only assume that the improvement, which was considerable in the TSM's, would be similar in the VSM's. They're great speakers, but a couple of things if you haven't tried them you should be aware of. The BAM does a great job in augmenting the bass, but they're still a little bass shy, imo. I use my TSM's with dual subwoofers and would do the same with the VSM's. You can only get so much bass out of a 6 1/2 woofer. They also seem to be a little picky with cables and seem to do best with Cardas, particularly the new Clear version. I have not heard your cables so don't know how they might match up.

Regards Mark

[CJinSC]

"Full time paying for the habit" - isn't that the truth!
The wife may shoot me before the bill is paid Well I have a small room & my C-1 ii's only go down to 45hz, and I think the Merlins hit 30hz. It should be an improvement, but I don't know if I want to shell out for Cardas Clear & dual subs. Isn't Merlin working on their own sub line?

[ronenash]

Originally Posted by CJinSC

Thanks Roneash. So the preamp is operating at full gain once a signal is flowing to it, but the output is attenuated via the volume control? So it could just be a noisy tube. I believe the music had been pumping for several hours prior to the distortion. I certainly would rather have noisy tubes than have to send an amp in for repair. I have been thinking about the input tube matching design issues with the LP140's & have contemplated switching to LP275, as I believe someone said they didn't have these issues. Of course expensive to retube, but I bet they are glorious with well recorded material.

I believe the input stage in the lp275 is identical to the lp140 they both use the same 3 6922 as input and phase splitter. Both are excellent amps. The lp275 will most likely be an improvement but the cost of re-tubing is very high.

[Marco1]

John, don't mean to discourage you....they're really great speakers. In a small room you wouldn't need a subwoofer. Give Bobby at Merlin a call. He'll probably be familiar with your cables. Looks like the guy selling the VSM's on A'gon is in South Carolina as well. Tell him to bring 'em over for a listen

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by CJinSC

The LP140's drive the Dynes to high levels, but I am using Magnan Signature interconnects which are quite resistive, lowering output by 6db. So I end listening at around 70 - 80 clicks out of 99 on my CT5. I don't know where the gain of the preamp kicks in, but it has to be close to this level. I sent one of the amps back to CJ for a bad capacitor & the tech told me not to worry about driving the amps too hard when I described my usual listening sessions & equipment. Two nights ago though I heard some low level crackling coming from the right channel. I stopped the cd player & the distortion continued so I turned off all the equipment - no red fuse lights were lit. Makes me wonder if I have another bad capacitor.
Keep in mind I put new tubes in the amps & preamp when the last capacitor went bad to make sure it wasn't a tube issue. Maybe I'm just gun shy with these amps, feeling like I'm torturing them. I thought about trading them towards some LP 275's or just switching camps to some Pass Labs solid state.
In the end, I guess I'm just curious about how well the 140's would drive efficient speakers...

Wait...are these magnetic cables like the High Fidelity cables?

[CJinSC]

Ronenash - I thought the 140 & 275 designs were the same as well, but I think Myles said something in another thread about the 275's not having input tube matching problems. Anyway, retubing cost would probably preclude that switch unless the 275 blew me away even at low volume levels compared to the 140's.

Marco - Spartanburg, SC is about 3 hours away from my house on the coast. After college football, a road trip may be in order!

Puma Cat - "Internally, the Magnan Signature interconnects have unique conductors. I do not believe any other audio cable in the world uses anything like this conductor. Magnan starts with very thin Teflon ribbons. Each ribbon is coated with a non-metallic conductive film – that’s right, there is no metal in the conductors of the Signature interconnect. Each ribbon is then insulated. Several of these wide, non-metallic ribbon conductors are then sandwiched with layers of damping material. The longer the interconnect is going to be, the more layers of conductor and damping material have to be in the cable to keep resistance near the practical limit for a commercial product. One characteristic of the non-metallic conductive film is that it has quite a bit of resistance compared to a copper conductor. So much resistance that a 4 foot length of Magnan Signature interconnect is specified as having a nominal 30,000 ohms of resistance. I measured a DC resistance of 24,000 ohms in a 4 foot cable. Initially, this sounds like bad news… how could a cable possibly sound good with that much resistance? Very easily when the conductor you found to have the best possible performance in the time/phase domain happens to have significant resistance. 30,000 ohms (nominal) turned out to give the best possible sound quality with the widest range of compatibility with amps, preamps and source components. Because of the need to keep the total resistance in Signature interconnect cables somewhere close to 30,000 ohms, Magnan has to limit the maximum length of Signature interconnects to 10 feet. Beyond 10 feet the cable size and construction time just gets out of hand. If you require balanced interconnects with XLR connectors, the maximum length is normally limited to 5 feet, though there may be times when Magnan could go as long as 7 feet. The balanced version was not reviewed for this article."

[Myles B. Astor]

Originally Posted by CJinSC

Ronenash - I thought the 140 & 275 designs were the same as well, but I think Myles said something in another thread about the 275's not having input tube matching problems. Anyway, retubing cost would probably preclude that switch unless the 275 blew me away even at low volume levels compared to the 140's. Marco - Spartanburg, SC is about 3 hours away from my house on the coast. After college football, a road trip may be in order! Puma Cat - "Internally, the Magnan Signature interconnects have unique conductors. I do not believe any other audio cable in the world uses anything like this conductor. Magnan starts with very thin Teflon ribbons. Each ribbon is coated with a non-metallic conductive film – that’s right, there is no metal in the conductors of the Signature interconnect. Each ribbon is then insulated. Several of these wide, non-metallic ribbon conductors are then sandwiched with layers of damping material. The longer the interconnect is going to be, the more layers of conductor and damping material have to be in the cable to keep resistance near the practical limit for a commercial product. One characteristic of the non-metallic conductive film is that it has quite a bit of resistance compared to a copper conductor. So much resistance that a 4 foot length of Magnan Signature interconnect is specified as having a nominal 30,000 ohms of resistance. I measured a DC resistance of 24,000 ohms in a 4 foot cable. Initially, this sounds like bad news… how could a cable possibly sound good with that much resistance? Very easily when the conductor you found to have the best possible performance in the time/phase domain happens to have significant resistance. 30,000 ohms (nominal) turned out to give the best possible sound quality with the widest range of compatibility with amps, preamps and source components. Because of the need to keep the total resistance in Signature interconnect cables somewhere close to 30,000 ohms, Magnan has to limit the maximum length of Signature interconnects to 10 feet. Beyond 10 feet the cable size and construction time just gets out of hand. If you require balanced interconnects with XLR connectors, the maximum length is normally limited to 5 feet, though there may be times when Magnan could go as long as 7 feet. The balanced version was not reviewed for this article."

Although it's not quite the same, the biggest difference I heard in going from the 140s to the ART amps was the sense of ease and unrestrained dynamics. The same thing holds true in going from the ART to the 1 kW+/channel Cello Encore amplifiers. That is of course with the ML Summit speakers.