mattnshilp--thanks for your informative comparisons between Rowland and Merrill. As long as there are no hifi-ish frequency aberrations in the Merrill Elements, they should make obsolete electronics that sound like tubes, whether tubes or SS, if one wants truth, clarity AND a natural likeness to the real thing. Any clue when the 114 stereo will be available?
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mattnshilp--if you experience live sounds of nature like rustling of leaves, natural percussion like hammers and buzzsaws, birds and the bees, as well as live music in open air free of hall wall and carpet colorations, you realize that the euphonic sounds of tubes or comparable solid state are not the true sounds of nature. Neither are raucous solid stage electronics with their own distortions. Based on your descriptions of the 116, Merrill may have created the most perfect likeness to the real thing. Compared to that, or live sounds of nature, I am completely bored with euphonic subtraction of vital information. I haven't spent so much money and time in my long audio experience to tolerate any component that subtracts information. Believe me, if you look at the score (printed music) of most classical pieces, there is so much more information that must be revealed and heard that even the best system is still veiled. It is like speaking the English language correctly--one should always try to be understood as clearly as possible, to the best of one's ability. |
Thanks, Merrill. Can any of the Element amps be used with any preamp of your own choosing? I don't like the wideband design of Spectral which requires using a Spectral preamp.
Does the 114 double again to 1600 watts into 1 ohm? Put another way, what is the maximum continuous current, maximum peak current? Live classical music from the front row has levels from 20 to 90 dB for most music with rare peaks of 100 dB. Delicate nuances heard at 50 dB or less and even average levels of 70-80 dB require less than 1 watt in most systems. I believe that lower powered amps have more accuracy given less chance of matching errors in multiple transistors and shorter signal paths, so how is the accuracy of the 114 compared to 116 at low power levels? Of course, the 116 has the advantage at very large power levels, although the 114 is still a high powered amp. |
mattnshilp, I sent you a message.
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ricevs,
I'm with you. I posted on your latest comment at the very bottom, page 2.
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As a violinist, I think this latest review by Dr. Michael Bump is reasonably informative. Many audiophiles describe sound in terms of width, depth, decay. These are all derived characteristics, particularly width and depth which are subjective, whereas the fundamentals of music are frequency balance and extension, transient response and tone. Dr. Bump certainly describes the amps with the educated ear of a professional musician whose training and present activity revolve around clarity and precision, as he states. These are the most important characteristics of both live and reproduced music. It would have been more informative if he compared the 116 and Veritas in the checklist at the conclusion. Importantly, the 116 is given the maximum 5 notes for attack, but is the Veritas only 4 or 4.5 notes? I didn't research any prior review of the Veritas in the same magazine which could have been done by someone else. Maybe they rated Veritas as 5 notes for attack, but what counts is how a single reviewer rates both products in various criteria. Dr. Bump is very articulate, but it helps to see numerical ratings as a summary at the end.
I hope the upcoming review comparison by Srajan in 6 moons of the prototype amp with Purifi module and the 116 is properly informative. Let's keep our eyes peeled.
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Viber7,
Many thanks for your informative review of the 118, which I found helpful because we have similar values/tastes in music and audio. Mike Fremer in a recent Stereophile found the CH Precision 1.1 to have a touch of warmth but otherwise reasonably good detail. Do you find the same? Coolness of tonality may be associated with fatigue and HF extension but is somewhat different from thinness. The new Boulder 1160 amp has been reviewed as extremely revealing. Although some people have found previous Boulders as having very cool/ruthless tonality, the 1160 and possibly the lighter lower powered 1161 may be serious competition for the Merrill 116/118 for sound quality. I wonder if the 118’s still non fatiguing nature suggests that it is warmer and not quite as revealing in upper mid/HF range as the Boulder. I don't know if the 118 amp has the same soft landing feature as the Christine preamp, but I am concerned that you found the guitar plucks rounded and not as lifelike sharp as they are in real life. Unamplified guitar is not loud, so this is a red flag for me in that the Merrill duo may be somewhat forgiving at all volume levels. As you know, live classical music up close can be fatiguing at high SPL, such as hearing a trumpet projecting its bell toward your ears. In fact, the conductor Benjamin Zander said that Mahler wanted the brass section to play as loud as they can at the climax in the 1st movement of the 5th Symphony. The object of high fidelity in audio systems is to play the music at a sensible volume so that maximum clarity can be heard, without the fatigue that comes mainly from blasting the volume. Another way to say this is that an accurate amp will sound fatiguing at unnaturally loud SPL, but reveal all the detail at lower SPL while avoiding fatigue.
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Viber7,
Thanks for your well expressed clarification, particularly how the 118 by itself keeps the guitar and related transient rich instruments sharp and clear, in contrast to the Christine which has a softening effect. I also like your methodology of recording your own piano playing in your room as a reference point. Actually, I have never been happy about the sound of any piano in a room. Even a 6 foot grand piano needs a room at least the size of a small recital hall to sound its best, free of the stifling affect of nearby walls and low ceiling. In a typical home, the piano is bass heavy in a similar way to how large speakers sound in a tiny room, but much worse. So by doing the recording in your room, you brilliantly correct for this effect. Even with my own listening to a piano in the home, I can still tell that the percussive effect at all freq is tight like a mallet striking an anvil, which is not at all like the woolly mush coming from many tube amps and some euphonic SS amps.
Although I agree that terms like "cool" mean different things to different people, let me propose a simple way to describe what I mean. Compare the sound of a flute, oboe, clarinet playing the same note A 440 Hz at the same volume level. The flute has a "cooler" or "whiter" sound than the oboe or clarinet, possibly due to the fact that its overtone structure is skewed toward higher freq. The 3 instruments all have most of their energy at the fundamental A 440 Hz, but the differences in complete tone are related to different proportions and phases of the higher overtones. The oboe and clarinet sound more similar to each other than to the flute, with the oboe possibly sounding brighter due to the nasal piercing quality of its harmonics. In my vocabulary, cool is like bright with more HF proportion, and warm is like dark with less HF proportion and more bass.
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What is happening with the 6moons review of the 114? Srajan seems to be bored. "To be continued" has been there for a month or so. |
