Aleph-3 Questions

You sound like me. I am very hard on every new piece of gear--fear of failure, perhaps. I say relax and let this wonderful piece of gear break in. And yes, it needs at least one hour of warm up before sounding good. And longer is better. Going directly from a tube amp (especially an old style like the ST-70) to ANY solid state is an adjustment. It is not necessarily a matter of "better" but different. Although in this case, I think you will eventually see the Aleph 3 is much better. I replaced my Dynaco ST-70 in 1961 with a Marantz 8B--much improved sound-which I used for about 25 years. This was replaced with a solid-state Marantz (MA-5), later with Adcom GFA-555, then a Krell KMA-100 Mk.2 which was finally replaced by the Aleph 3 on mid/highs of a bi-amped system. The Aleph is hands down the best of the bunch--within its power range, of course. Relax and enjoy.

Hello David, As suggested earlier, some of the problem might be a preamp mismatch . Generally , you'd want the Output impedence of the Preamp to be 10 X ( Input Impedence of the Amp ) . Since the Aleph series have an very low input impedence, around 10 kohms ....you'd want a preamp with an output impedence of 1000 ohms or less . Most tube pre's have an output impedence of 1000 ohms or More ...and thus are not idealy suited to the Aleph series . A tubed exception is the Sonic Frontiers Line series of pre's ( technically speaking,..haven't tried the match ) . You may want to try a non-remote Aleph P ( around $1100 used ) ...the Aleph L isn't said to be so good ( I've tried the P , not the L ) . Or , you might try the Nelson Pass designed Adcom 750 preamp ( used about $750 ) . The Aleph 3 should be more transparent than the Dyn. tube amp , by a large amount . Also, it should open a whole new level of detail, nuance . Stage/image should be clearer and less wooly , ...if not bigger, stage should be better defined . A lot of staging will be down to the speaker placement as well, so you might want to do some work there ... Good luck, Martin .

rogue sez their 99 preamps' output impedence is 100 ohms, but this *can't* be correct, as my experiments w/crossing the outputs w/resistors indicates an output impedence in the 2k-2.4k range. fwiw... doug

Sedond,I e-maied Mark(Rogue) and he got right back to me as he is working late as they are getting ready to move to a larger facility this week.I gave him the specs.for the Aleph-3.He said the match should be fine with the 99.I told him about your comments (no name) and he said"Im not sure what he was measuring but it would be darned hard to design a mu-follower type preamp with a high output impedence of 2K-2.4K ohm." I just hope this amp pleases me when fully burned in.If not anybody want a Aleph-3 for a grand?

david, ya mite wanna contact me about a conversation i had w/another mfr about the output impedence of the rogue 99. his feelings were that it would be hard to design a mu-follower-type preamp that *didn't* have an output impedence of 2k-2.4k ohms. the test i did comprised of placing resistors across the outputs, and listening for the reduction in volume. generally, 3db is the smallest perceived volume difference that can casually be noticed by people. (and, the output impedence rating indicates what input impedence will cause a 3db drop in volume). well, when crossing the outputs w/a 2.2k-ohm resistor, there was an easily audible drop in volume, when connected to my 25k-ohm input impedence system. a 1k-ohm resister *really* reduced the volume level w/the rogue preamp. when i tried the cary slp98 linestage, the 2.2k-ohm resistor had absolutely *no* affect on the volume level, i had to go down to a 1k-ohm resistor to get the same reduction in volume as w/the 2.2k-ohm resistoe on the rogue. the cary's output impedence is ~800 ohms, btw... hope this helps, doug