New H20 Signature S250

I wrote that backwards - sorry - the H20 was FEEDING the Transparents into my WP7s. I fed the H20 with Transparent Balanced Ref.

I understand your experiences are different than my own. I put my H2O Signature on 4 0hm Studio Grands, and they kicked ass. The owner of the SGs likes percussion. He has an amazing drum run that will stress any speaker and amp to their limits. Those bass drums, kettles, bells, rim whacks, and cymbal crashes were hair raising, and in the room.

The S-H2O would be appreciated by people used to class A Alephs. Those who want the big bang, need to get the Signatures. The two differ considerably.

I just got thru with another set of comparisons of the H2O S250 Sigs and my Tact 2150s. The sigs were, of course, run from the analog outputs of the TCS MK II while the Tact amps were fed from digital outputs. Both were plugged into their own PS audio Ultimate outlets which were then plugged into a single PS Audio P600 regenerator.

First up were the Tact amps. They were very smooth but after a while I felt something was missing...a bit of low level information as well a bit of drive. The sound was pretty and involving but a bit on the, well, boring side. I kept wanting the music to pick up the pace. It took me about a week to get past the pretty sound and start carping along those lines. The S250 Sigs were sitting idle.

Then I switched over to the S250s. Well the difference was immediate and obvious even without warm up. My right foot started tapping immediately. The sound was pretty as well but very, very open. And the bass, wow, the bass was like you read about, very tight, focused but well integrated with the music, providing a rather thrilling underpinning to everything.

This was a surprise as before when I sent my standard S250s back to Henry for updating I slightly preferred the Tact's using the exact same setup. Now the table were turned quite noticeably.

This tells me a couple of things. First, the DACs in the TCS are quite good and second, the Signature upgrade has turned a really good amp into a great amp.

I've not given up on the Tact amps yet as I've been feeding their digital inputs with a cheap set of Radio Shack digital interconnects because they were the only ones with the right length to reach the amps. I really need to try something a little bit more uptown. Also, several people have suggested that I do the upsampling just after the transport, then feed the TCS with that, and finally, put a Monarchy jitter reducer just before the input of each amp. Great! Just what I want, more boxes and wires. But I'm going to give it a try.

Jeff

When I demoed the S250 sig, using the PS Audio P600 held back the dynamics in the h2o. It was MUCH better without. (Dedicated 20 amp circuit.) A friend also demoed the amp and found it much more dynamic without his BPT, much to his surprise!

Actually, I do get a bit of compression using the P600 after a certain volume level is reached. But then I don't listen real loud and my room has concrete walls, floor and ceiling so it's very "efficient". However, the P600 does indeed clean things up a lot and so do the ultimate outlets. When I get the scratch up, I'll start trolling for another P600 to dedicate to the amps.

Jeff