Topic: decisions ... decisions

[Nick's Picks]

choice is good

[Nick's Picks]

stingray!

thats what my eyes tell me.
ears suggest something else.
no doubt, the stingray is sweet, smooth, warm, punchy, musical and very pleasing to the eye.

the sony; huge, detailed, involving, revealing and remotely controlled (a good thing).  makes my speakers dissapear entirely.

[Todd R]

Wow, really hard to believe you think the Manley and the 3000es are in the same league, let alone that the 3000es bests it!  I'm ordering my 3000es today.    

Really, no kidding.  Getting it mainly since I find my HT room to be a more comfortable listening space than my living room where I had my primary 2-channel system.  And since my symphonies+acurus couldn't do 5.1 which I need for the HT room (and since my wife would kill me if I had two complete and separate playback systems in the same room), I'm ditching my tube + solid state separates for the 2000/3000/5000es bandwagon.  And if it doesn't meet my expectations, I'm flying out to New England to kick your ass (and stopping by Denver on the way to kick Darren's).     Otherwise, I'll be buying you guys a beer the next time I see you.   

[dnsacks]

pressure's on -- Todd -- I haven't yet commented on how this works as a HT 5.1 receiver, but am very impressed with its dsp abilities in this function as well.  Sony's simulated the "sound" of a few editing suites, etc. and I find them a real nice compliment to the traditional dolby pro logic decoding options.  Be sure to go through all of the various setup chores, etc. as telling it speaker location, distances, size, etc. seems to make a big difference in how its dsp works.

Enjoy!

[Nick's Picks]

Wow, really hard to believe you think the Manley and the 3000es are in the same league, let alone that the 3000es bests it!  I'm ordering my 3000es today.    

well, in reality the 2000es would be a more even match for the 50wpc stingray.  i'm sure it would still sound the same...only drive the point home even more as you can find those pretty darn cheap (4 hundredish?)  online where as the cheapest you'll find a stingray is $1500 used.

the 3000es's 150 digital wats can bow the stingray out of the water in sheer SPL if I want it to.  At the same time, its resolution at a low volume is astounding where as the Manley needs to be playing at a good clip to really open up.

so ask yourself, how much do you want to pay for cool factor and no remote?

[FiKe]

 Well I read a bunch of reviews on the sony 2000/3000/5000/9000 all pretty favorable. The very idea of putting a high end dual digial amps and 150w/channel in my music room for 622.00$ to make a long story short mine shoul be here tomorrow



                                     Phillip




               

[cheshirecat]

Hmm... Well I love the sound of tubes, though I haven't heard the stingray.  Personally I'm an EL34 kinda guy.

At any rate, what do you think of the two?  Forget watts, and all the numbers on paper, and looks etc.  If you had to do a blind 2 ch. taste test, which would you choose?

Do you suppose you'll do a review of the Stingray assuming you get rid of it?

[Nick's Picks]

Hmm... Well I love the sound of tubes, though I haven't heard the stingray.  Personally I'm an EL34 kinda guy.

At any rate, what do you think of the two?  Forget watts, and all the numbers on paper, and looks etc.  If you had to do a blind 2 ch. taste test, which would you choose?

Do you suppose you'll do a review of the Stingray assuming you get rid of it?

I like the stingray a lot.  Its colored...but its a very nice sounding coloration to my ears.  Pleasing to listen to, images very well and just has a great tube sound.

But in a blind test, i'm positive i'd pick the Sony out.  It is RAZOR sharp w/its imaging and spatial presentation.  I dont have the means to do A/B tests between them, but i've been listening to the Stingray a lot recently, and just plugged the Sony back in the other day and was (again) blown away by the sound of it.  Its like cleaning a window and really being able to see through it.
For my musical tastes, which seems to revolve heavily around things like subtle details, soundstage, imaging and making my giant ass speakers virtualy dissapear in my living room as any point source of sound, the Sony is a clear winner.

The Stingray has much better bass responce.  Its a FAT TUBE sound, and its really nice.  I've never heard such pounding bass out of a tube amp.  If it were 100wpc, It might be my choice.  And though its 50watts sound like much more, it will not drive my room to near concert volume, which is something I enjoy from time to time.

The Sony has a DSP module for the way it handles bass frequencies that you can adjust between 3 positions and off.  DC Phase Linearlizing is the controll, and it allows you to adjust the phase polarity of bass signals.  This can make the amps low freq. sound sort of of soft and fuzzy, but with solid punch to it (like tube bass), or lean and clean.  i'm not sold on any particular setting at the moment.

As for a stingray review.  There are a lot of them out there.  The amp has been around for 5 years.  I suppose I"ll type up a little something about it and take some more pictures.  Its a fucking awesome piece, that is for sure. 
So, who wants to buy it?
$1650 and its yours.  Will not dissapoint!

[Tim]

what do you think of the bass on the Sony Nick?

[jpschust]

if you can find someone to pick up my magnepan's, my belles 150a, my amc tube amp i'm all over that stingray :-P  i need to sell off this second setup i have going on.  that or at least when i get the room, move the belles to the living room to biamp my front speakers.

[Nick's Picks]

what do you think of the bass on the Sony Nick?

its solid, but not as nice as the stingray.
I dont find myself looking for more bass energy from the Sony when I listen to it.  And it does have tone controls, should I ever decide that I need a little more.

[Nick in Edinboro]

So.. you bought this :


For two channel stereo   Talk about having some I/O, holy hell that's a lot of plugs!

Nick, I've read your review about the reciever and that's about it... It's my understanding that what's revolutionary about this amp is that it removes some of the stages between the digital input and the analog output through use of a microprocessor chip correct?

I'd be really intrigued to see it A/B'ed against other "chip amps" which have been popular with DIY'ers for a long while for their incredible sound called GainClones.. It seems they operate on a similar theory as this "ES" amp.  Both stress reducing the path  between the input and the output, etc. both are using chips, etc.   The craze sorta started with the GainCard amp made by Lab47.

The GainClone uses a National Semiconductor LM3875, I'd imagine the Sony uses an in-house chip of some sort but be intrigued if perhaps it used something else..

Wish I built one of these so you could borrow it...  I've read a lot of great things about chip amps, etc. and this seems to be another, albeit a bit more expensive (GainClones can be built for < $100)

[Tim]

thanks again Nick!

[Nick's Picks]

its the PCM > DSD upsampling that I suspect has a lot to do w/the magic in the sony.
I'm not sure if the "S-MASTER" chip is responcible for that or not.
I think the signal path theory w/the Sony is that the actual A/D stage happens post gain and right before the actual speaker output.  So all other bells and whistels w/the signal processing are done in the digital domain.  But, i'm not entirely sure myself on the facts with this.  I plan to understand it a little better.  I might have to bug Doug Oade or a Sony rep for some real inside skinny, but I think we have the jist of it.