SS Amp for natural vocals

The DALI 400s benefit giantly from a great amp with lots of power and damping. I heard it with three amps and was blown away with the 400s driven by Rowland 501s. I think you'll experience night and day difference.

The first I heard the DALIs with was a nice mid-priced intergrated with just under 100 WPC, then I heard it with the Rowland 102 stereo amp and finally with the 501s. The little integrated had out of control bass, such that it was unacceptable to me. The 102 cleaned things up nicely, but the 501 really controlled and deepened the bass and cleaned the mids and really made the ribbon tweeters sing. It was a wonderful combination. The gain was NOT marginal.

Dave

"The DALI 400s benefit giantly from a great amp with lots of power and damping"

If so then there is only one amplifier here below $10k price - Spectron Musician III SE - amp which can control this speaker with grace and reproduce voices "to die for"

All The Best
Rafael

Well Rafael, not exactly.

The Jeff Rowland Design Group Continuum 500 integrated amp is only $8800, with 1000 watts into 4 ohms. It handles the DALI's very nicely. (I literally just walked in the door from listening to the Continuum driving the DALI 400s and the Vienna Beethoven Baby Grands, for about the last 3-hours).

I should say that I'm having second thoughts about the DALIs. I was disturbed that the DALIs don't really handle low bass as well as the Vienna Acoustics, losing the harmonic richness in a Johnny one-bass-note kind of response below a certain frequency. Given the price and size I'd expect much better bass resolution.

The DALIs excell at highs. They're incredible with things like fingers on strings and air in voices. The mids are also very good, but I prefer the VAs, that's without regard to price. If you consider price, then the VAs are an overwhelming choice for me.

Dave

" ...I was disturbed that the DALIs don't really handle low bass as well as the Vienna Acoustics, losing the harmonic richness in a Johnny one-bass-note kind of response below a certain frequency. Given the price and size I'd expect much better bass resolution."

Are you sure that it is the speakers fault? Given their price and size and REPUTATION, I would suggest to investigate if they were properly controlled to begin with.

I read on Spectron web site that rms power is very misleading number because in "rms" sort of mode you really need 1-5 per cent of this power ONLY. However, when push come to you know what.... amplifier must handle it and it may be hundreds times greater them "rms"..
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Spectron claim that their amp is stable up to 0.1 Ohm and during the "stress" can deliver 3500 watts over 500 msec.

Next, and it may (or may not be important) that peak voltage even for medium efficiency speakers is more then 100 volts and all solid state and class D amplifiers that I know (except Spectron and Mackintosh) have rail voltage of about 65 volts - thus if signal is 100 volts then its clipped.

It could be that you have incredible speakers which are very sensitive to the signal they are asked to reproduced... and they are simply doing that whereas other speakers mask it

All The Best
Rafael

I do know that the DALIs are very amp sensitive. I've now heard them with four amps and they sounded very different with each one.

My friend, are you suggesting that the DALIs may drop below 1 ohm in the low frequencies? I'll ask Jeff Rowland of the stress limits of the Continuum. He suggests using it with speakers with a nominal impedance of 3 ohms or higher. I suspect that it'll handle loads down below 2 ohms easily, but I haven't seen any test data of that kind of stress.

Since I'm buying the Rowland, the DALIs will certainly not be on my shopping list.

Dave