Dartzeel 108 vs Ayre Mr-X

Charles, regarding the issue of break-in; the darts have the same issue as the MR-X. i have had 5 different darTZeel NHB-108 stereo amps in my system; three of which i had when brand new.

when i was first loaned a brand new dart amp to try i still had my Tenor 300 watt Hybrid monos. i put the dart in my system for a week......it was very good but not super....so i took it out and went back to my Tenors. a few weeks later one Tenor amp had a problem....so i went back to the dart amp. at about 400 hours the dart came alive almost overnight. it openned up, refinement improved, and the dynamics dramatically increased. a huge difference. the two already broken in darts needed about 12 hours to warm up and they were good to go. then i purchased a brand new set for myself and went thru the 400+ hour break-in again.

if i would not have ever spent the time with break-in i would never had heard what the dart was capable of.

btw; most times the dart dealer offers home demos....i agree that is ideal if possible.

Mike,

You make a good point. I don't think that anybody can get the full measure of any component unless they live with it for several months. First it needs to break in fully. Then you need to try different racks/shelves, footers, power cords, interconnects, et cetera to make sure you're getting the most out of it.

Obviously this is impossible for most people before they make a purchasing decision. So you have to do the best you can, visiting dealers, reading reviews, et cetera. But no matter what you still have to make a leap of faith at some point and choose. It's kind of like getting married. You can't date all the women in the world, let alone live with them for a year or two. So at some point you just have to make that leap of faith and make a commitment.

Luckily, some of the other important factors can be found out more quickly than the sound quality. Like the looks. It doesn't take a four month in-home trial to figure out if you like the way it looks. Or features. If you need 8 inputs on a preamp, you can rule out a lot of products right away.

Some stuff takes a bit more work, but still less than an exhaustive in-home audition. For example, you can search the on-line forums and get a pretty good idea about customer support or resale value or reliability, or the ability to drive difficult loads.

There's no "right" or "wrong" choices in this hobby. If you come home from work, put some music on and it sounds good to you, then you're ahead of the game. If you find yourself listening to more music (and more kinds of music) than you used to, then you're pretty much done.

Charles Hansen
Ayre Acoustics, Inc.

Charles. Just two short questions:

1st: do you plan to release in the near future a "R" series stereo power amp for those who do not need the power of the monos and do not like the looks of the 1-series ?

2nd: I´ve heard roumors at the Munich high-end show that Ayre is going to release an integrated amp that ranks between the current 5-series and the current 1-series ?

Thanks for your comments.

Frank

the avalon indras and ayre are made in heaven..