YAMAHA AS500 AND DALI ZENSOR 1

[KiwiMoto]

Erm,back to topic.
Sell the Yamaha and spend the money on a good used amp.How bout a MF A100 for example?VTL tiny triodes could hit the 'warm' spot as well.

 

[ear]

try this: loudness to -1,5, treble to -1 , bass 0.

 

[Anonymous]

This topic appears to have become fairly painful and off topic!!!

The OP has just bought the Yamaha amp so I doubt he/she is going to want to sell it now and go for a 2nd hand amp

The Yamaha amp is a good one; it's well reviewed and well liked but as with any system the right speakers and/or source make the difference!!!

The B&W 602 S3 speakers are NOT bright at all; not in comparison to the likes of the old M/A silver or branze range etc...

The OP really needs to see if and what he/she can demo, may be with ideas of the afore mentioned seperates and see how it goes from there

 

[Anonymous]

To be honest I think SoulFantasy is sat at home Scratching his/hers head feeling confused. Hence the no reply. If I had some speaker advice to offer to match the Yamaha, then the Mission MX series or the New Castle knight series dependent on budget..

 

[emcc_3]

I have this amp and have it paired with MA BX5's. If your having any brightness with the amp turn down the loudness slightly turn up the bass and turn down the treble slightly. This cured slight issues I was having with certain albums or CD's coming across as bright. With the alterations the combination sounds great. Also make sure you invest in decent speaker cable, I just bought QED micro and feel this may be the cause of some of the issues I was having.

 

[Anonymous]

To be honest I think SoulFantasy is sat at home Scratching his/hers head feeling confused. Hence the no reply. If I had some speaker advice to offer to match the Yamaha, then the Mission MX series or the New Castle knight series dependent on budget..

Good call on the Castle Knight speakers; they're very good indeed and would suit the Yamaha well

 

[Anonymous]

I just bought QED micro and feel this may be the cause of some of the issues I was having.

Fully agree; try some Chord Odyssey 2 or Carnival Silverscreen speaker cable and that should help to calm the highs down well

 

[Anonymous]

Hi All

thanks for the advice, comments and lively debate!! All much appreciated...I am a serious record collector and have been for the last 40 yeasr, however still a novice when it come to hifi...I have obviously made the fundamental error of not listening to a system before purchase....for now I am happy to stick with the Yamaha and build a budget system with suitable speakers, cables etc...i have the scope for another system when I feel I have gained enough confidence/experience. These forums are very helpful for that purpose...thanks again and i am sure i will have more queries to follow

 

[matthewpiano]

The A-S500 is a perfectly capable amp for the money and it works particularly well with the Mission MX1s, so I'd second The Limey's suggestion to look at the MX series.

 

[the record spot]

I'd change the amp first, and see what the speakers sound like with a decent one.

Forget fancy cables - total waste of money and will affect nothing except your wallet.

If you can audition a Class A amp of any description or get your hands on some tube gear. Refurbished Quad II amps are a pretty good bet TBH, else go for a reasonable prices tube set - which normally means Chinese or Chinese sourced. Read up on Nutshell HiFi to learn about your system and why it sounds like it does.

Yep, the Yammy is apparently quite a bright little thing, which puts me right off it. Not sure of the OP's budget, but I'd be inclined to stick on the XTZ Class A D100 - £625 - and Audio Sanctum will refund in full if it's not your thing, they do home demos for XTZ.

105wpc at 8ohms, good current delivery and a better amp than the 500 by some way I think. Class A up to the first 50w incidentally.

EDIT: Just saw the OP's post two up and bearing that in mind, forget what I said until the next upgrade! I hope you find something that goes well with the Yamaha and do check out some decent low cost cables - these needn't be expensive. If you don't want a generic one, QED's Qunex 2 will do you nicely at around £30. Computergear's cost around £8. For speaker cable, 322-strand (14AWG) will be absolutely fine.

 

[Anonymous]

Ok I know the OP is keeping the amp, but these are still fair comments:

Yep, the Yammy is apparently quite a bright little thing, which puts me right off it. Not sure of the OP's budget, but I'd be inclined to stick on the XTZ Class A D100 - £625 - and Audio Sanctum will refund in full if it's not your thing, they do home demos for XTZ.

I think that 'brightness' in most transistor amps is not a frequency response issue, it's a distortion issue. GNFB (Global negative feedback) can only get rid of the 2nd and 3rd harmonics in general. In a tube amp the rest decay naturally - but in a transistor amp these tend to persist. The problem isn't purely down to the transistors however, it's down to the Class B operation, and crossover distortion. Cross-over distortion is when the +ve going signal crosses over to a different set of transistors for the -ve part of the signal. And vice versa. This is a level independent switching distortion that runs at a few mV, depending upon the amp, bias etc.

The main issue with level independent distortion such as this (same as quiet signals on a CD in fact - quantisation noise is also level independent) is that the distortion is higher (as a %age) when the level is lower.

Given that we make most use of the first watt in an amplifier a powerful transistor amp can have a pretty ugly looking output at 1W, which makes the multiple harmonics sound very 'bright' and 'detailed'. As noted before, GNFB fails to remove the most important (audibly bad) ones.

As the distortion is usually measured at nearly full power this doesn't show up in the figures. Also as THD is the sum of the harmonics, the unpleasant ones are masked by the absence of the harmless 2nd and 3rd. You can learn about this here: http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/FindingCG.html

The use of THD by magazines has been ruining audio for decades.

Class A fixes a lot of these issues so should be a top priority for any Hi-Fi buff. Class B can sound good with a very clever designer (Naim get around a few of it's nasty sounds) but with a poor designer is sounds just like that Yamaha - harsh and bright.

 

[RichDorset]

Hi, interested to know what you have ended up with. I actually have the Yamaha and Zensor 1's in one room. I am very pleased with them. They bring out a lot of clarity in all music types and have punchy base if you need it. Not ear bleeding base of course but enough for a relaxed listen. I am thinking about running a second pair of speakers off this amp into another room so your feedback helpful. Rich