Life after DarTZeel

I sold my Dartzeel amp and have never looked back.

The Dartzeel lacked dynamics and bass control for me. If I ever was in the mood to crack it the Dartzeel never came through. I was also very limited on speaker choice with the Datzeel.

I since moved on to Levinson 33H and Boulder 1060. They both put a big smile on my face and do everything very well. Talk about control and power and those babies can drive any speaker.

Now the Dartzeel preamp is a different story. They hit a home run with that preamp.

Dartzeel dealer,
On SF strads I might prefer the Dartzeel. Having owned the SF Levinson is about the worse combo you could come up with. On my Avalon Diamonds the 33H and Boulder worked out much better. The Avalon is a harder speaker to drive and it's sound 100% different then the Strads. Peoples opinions do differ greatly but that is exactly what poster has asked for is an opinion so I gave mine.

The other reason I sold it is, I had a product that broke last year that wasn't made in the USA and it took 4 months to get it fixed. I'm not saying Dartzeel would be the same case but I wasn't going to find out. I will not deal with that again so I only by US products plus it helps support my country in these crappy times. I also worry about companies like Dartzeel ability to stay in this business with such a limited product line and such high prices and we all know about the economy. $25,000 for a 100 watt stereo solid state amp that weight 65 pounds is hard to justify even if it sounds out of this world and it hates 4 ohm loads. You will see 20% of high end companies go out of business in the next 2 years. You will hear "business has never been better we are not going anywhere" then the next day a sign on the door.

I never said anything about Bryston. I said Boulder and Levinson! How did Bryston get into this? I have never owned Bryston before and Boulder is a far cry from Bryston.

Mike,

I used the Dartzeel in stereo only. I see you use 2 stereo amps in a vertical bi amp config so your results would be much different and you looking at $50,000 worth of amps. If your happy that's all that matters.

As you can see the amp doesn't like being below 4 ohms.

Stereophile measurements

I measured 160W into 8 ohms (22dBW), 230W into 4 ohms (20.6dBW), but 162W into 2 ohms (16.1dBW). The manufacturer strongly recommends using the Lo setting if the amplifier is to be used with low impedances. However, the amplifier then delivers significantly lower power at clipping—43W into 8 ohms (16.3dBW), 68W into 4 ohms (15.3dBW), and 95W into 2 ohms (13.75dBW)—with no reduction in low-power THD.