New H20 Signature S250

Lloyd, You found the one seemingly ambiguous line in the whole review. The
writing went like this,

"Tubes create a certain texture which these amps don't. Tubes can be
very transparent but to my ears, it's a transparency modified in different
frequency bands and modulated by certain layering and soundstaging effects.
The latter are highly addictive ( consider me a major addict). But they are
effects. They simply do not ever arise in real life."

The H2O will not add any effects, good or bad, to the recording. It just excels
on digging out the deepest nuances of the recording. I find that much more
addicting.

I believe a little bit of tubes is a good thing. My DAC has tubes. My preamp is
a class A solid state.

LLoydf, my comments above regarding my impression of the H20 signature were based on using an Audio Research Reference II tubed preamp.

I still think/suspect I just didn't have the right cables and that what made my interaction with the H2O not work for me at this time. I think it's a great amp anyway. Now that has to be some sort of odd statement. My tubes, in comparison, aren't as exciting.

Is anyone using these with electrostatic/Soundlab,Martin Logans,etc speakers? I must admit that I am being intriqued by all the buzz about these amps.I presently own a ARC-D150 power and I am on the fence big time.

Regards
Chuckie

I have run my Bel Canto evo4 on a friends Soundlab U2's and was not happy at all. The sound was immediately thin and bright'ish. Just no body and little emotion. Yet on my Magnepan 3.6's, the sound with the evo amplifier was outstanding.

The LC output filter in these digital amps don't sit particularly well with the transformer crossovers (with their associated wide variation in impedance) used in the Soundlab speakers. Also, Soundlabs and other electrostatics have very low inertia diaphrams and best performance, or that which is more critically damped, is ususally obtained with amplifiers featuring lower damping factors (a little output impedance). Just how much this really gives rise to the "thinness" is speculative though. Proper damping seems to have more effect on a systems musicality (or emotion). I think most of the perceived thin sound character is due to the LC output filter and the particular reactive crossover used in Soundlabs.

The Atmasphere OTL series works particularly well with Soundlabs. Other OTL amplifiers will likely also work well since some of their design philosophy is similar. Actually, tube amps in general with their relatively benign resistive plate impedance tend to mate well with Soundlabs.