ART 150/300 Anniversary Amplifiers

[joeinid]

Joe ,
What speakers are you using currently? CJ will sound great on any speaker really.

I currently have Revel Studio 2, JBL 4367 and JBL 4312SE 70th anniversary.

[Wildcat]

Hey Joe nice to see you're back!
Where have you been hiding and up to? Did you get bored of those Mac monoblocks... Just thought about it because there is another chap here who actually has the Martin Logan Neoliths (140 grand for the pair BTW) up in Sydney. He's using the mighty 2kw monoblocks all Mac setup but recently got tired of the sound until he heard the Ren15A driven with a single Art150, it surpassed the mighty Mac's in every sense of the term "musicality". He claims the Mac's weren't even close!

Wow! I have heard this firsthand myself.

At an audio show two years ago (2016), I heard the Renaissance 15a. They sounded...good. Not great, just good. I am a big fan of Martin Logan (and Gayle Sanders, who has a new company called Eikon Audio). I was a bit disappointed, to say the least--I started to wonder if ML had lost their way. 2017, the same audio store was showing the Neoliths. Same sound. Only this time, someone decided that they needed to blare "The Great Gate of Kiev" at a painful volume to show that stats could play loud. Drove me out of the room, and it was the only room where I complained to the staff about their demo. (They also had very poor taste in programming demo selections.)

Both years, there was a grating harshness to the sound. But last year...a revelation. In a nearby room, another dealer had the Renaissance 15a set up with Constellation electronics, featuring a Continuum Obsidian turntable with the Viper arm. Now THIS was how I remember Martin Logan stats sounding! Precise, yet warm and musical with nice imaging. That turntable is priced into the stratosphere but wow...it's one of the finer setups I've ever heard.

The electronics in the other room, the one I disliked both years in a row? McIntosh. They were driving the speakers both years with those huge 2kW monoblocks. For what reason, I don't know. The preamp/DAC/streamer were also McIntosh. It did not sound good. And a buddy of mine in our local audiophile club who heard it agreed--something was definitely off, and he owns McIntosh gear himself! To be honest, I've heard their solid state amps for decades and never liked them. It wasn't that they were bad, but they didn't engage me.

Across the room, they had tubed McIntosh gear driving a different system. (They switched off demo systems every half hour.) I have never heard any of their tube-based components, but it would have been nice to hear these through the ML panels. I bet it would be a whole different animal. MLs can easily reveal the flaws of the equipment attached, and I am betting we all missed out on something special.

So yes, I can easily see how someone could get tired of that solid state McIntosh system...