The Fastest most musical amp

interesting thread. "i want to find the FASTEST and MOST MUSICAL amp and preamp"......

what is "fast"? my perception is that some amps achieve speed thru skipping over texture and nuance. the very best pieces of gear and the best software seem to actually slow things down and allow you to hear deeper into music (oh yeah, music!). speed without texture and nuance is misguided IMHO. one amp, the Halcro, is most likely the fastest amp currently out there.....but it doesn't stir my soul.....so it's not for me.

real speed is the ability to render MICRODYNAMICS in a real way. when these microdynamics are combined with tonal texture and nuance you get the magic......veils are lifted and reality is suggested.

real speed is also the ability to be fast in the bass while getting tonality, texture and linearity thru the mid-bass. this is really an amp/speaker interface issue and not just an amp issue.

in my experience, the Tenor OTL is unique in it's ability to get this whole package correct. like the Atmasphere, the Tenor (as an OTL) is a tube amp with speed.

no doubt there are other amps i've not heard that may posses these attributes.

Mikelavigne to my mind has put it very well. It is the closeness to the "real thing" especially in the microdynamics, where "speed" is important. The way a sharply struck chord on a Steinway springs at you and decays, the resin on the bow of the violin, how a guitarstring plucked softly or hard and fast comes across. I share some of Egoss's thoughts, but to my mind that is not really the point. Rather I feel, Mike has hit it right on the dot.

Without getting into semantic corn syrup, speed to me
describes an amps ability to start and stop each tone
on time which keeps tones from smearing. Smearing,
or notes bleeding into one another will make for grainy
sound and detail, blackness, and rhythm will be lost under the smear. As has been stated, if an amp doesn't have enough power, often the bass is loose, flabby, or even missing. Maybe agility is a better word. When speakers are driven properly, I suppose some people could feel that the amp is slowing things down, but I certainly don't hear it that way -- to me it sounds pleasingly quick, or "agile" and it results in better
music. So, we can argue over terminology or we can see that we all want the same thing. Less grain, no smearing, detail, deep, tight, bass and uh...magic. Now, there's a word that needs no explaining, huh? Heh-heh-heh. Why doesn't someone start a thread
asking which is the slowest amplifier -- just for the heck
of it. Nahhhh....

The speed with which dynamic changes in music are reproduced relative to one another... i.e. the term includes the notion of relativity. In this sense, it's what Mikelavigne & Detlof and most others I believe, refer to.
Other amps that I've heard corresponding to this, are big Symphonic Lines. As Mike aptly put it, subjectively the music seems to be "slower" because of the plethora of detail -- easily perceptpible if you forget about the music & just listen to sounds (not very easy!). However, here too, slew rates are allegedly very high across the bandwidth (wide-band amps).

A small note: this seems a bit like an academic discussion as we still don't know what Dismalonyx's goal is, what speakers are in play. Or maybe it's intended as an open discussion? Cheers

I couldn't agree more with Mikelavigne regarding "fast", nuance, texture, microdynamics, etc. My personal combination - that I love because it meets Mike's stated criteria for me - is the CTC Blowtorch and Jeff Rowland 302. The latter, by the way, is far better than what Rowland has produced in the past.