lamm has been making amps for years.also the tubes in your friends amps could of had some problems.ive heard the kharma and they are antalitical and cold they have detail but there are so many other things they dont do you would get tired of them after awhile.karma is not an amp company and have nowhere near the experience of the lamms.i always hate when companies that make speakers start making other components they just dont have the expertise of other companies that just make amps .certainley not as much experience as vlademer of lamm
A very interesting amp audtion
My girlfriend and I were invited to a good friend and audiophile's house, because he wanted our opinion concerning a new amp he was audtioning. It's always great fun to hear a new piece and our friend has a world class system. His system is Kharma Grand Ceramiques, a Kharma sub-woofer, all enigma wires, Lamm L2 pre-amp, ML-1 mono blocks, and a Meitner digital front end. Not bad! It's really a treat to listen to music on his system. What he wanted us to listen to was Kharma's new Matrix 150 mono-blocks compared to his Lamm ML-1 mono-blocks. The Kharma amps are the size and weight of a phone book and run total cool. The Lamms of course are tubed, large, and run very hot. Well, we all agreed that the Kharma amps were more detailed, more extended on the top and bottem, more dynamic, had a larger soundstage with more air around the performers than the Lamms, but my girlfriend and audiophile friend still liked the Lamms better because of their "warmth and just a more natural/relaxing feel to the music". I was voted down, because if it was my system, I would have chosen to replace the Lamms with the new Kharmas because of the above stated virtues along with, to my ear's, a more honest rendering of timbres and fantastic transparency. I found the Lamms almost sounding somewhat congested in comparision. So no right or wrong, just personnal taste regarding these world class mono-block amps. I wanted to share this very interesting experience here on the GON with you fellow members for two reasons; 1) I believe that Kharma has come up with a real contender with their new Matrix MP 150 mono-blocks that should be considered by anyone audtioning world class reference amps. 2} They retail for $6500.00 for the pair, not chicken feed, but quite remarkable when you think they were quite competitive with a pair of $20000.00 world renowned amps.