Leading the way

By Anonymous -


Audio Research Ref 3 Stereo Tube Preamplifier



I don’t know how you got into this hobby, but my introduction occurred early in life, through the influence of my grandfather, Dr. James McVay. He didn’t necessarily push me to be interested in his passion for high end audio — he already knew I was interested in my dad’s trade, which is music.

He just fueled my excitement on the way music sounded through speakers and a system. He would tell me all kinds of stories about his DIY amplifier and speaker builds, how he turned a corner of his basement into a dance hall and another section of it into a legitimate German rathskeller, how he personally knew Paul Klipsch and how Paul was helping him with the crossover and tweeter horn array for his DIY project. How he was in a constant search for the right place to hide his speakers so he could get a semblance of a soundstage while keeping my decor-conscious grandmother happy.

He didn’t talk much about the dizzying array of brands in the hifi world except to say that Audio Research was the finest company in existence, with McIntosh fairly close behind. In his hifi days, both of those companies were absolutely crushing it and pushing the standards for home music playback higher and higher.

Certain things stick around in your head, and this was one for me. Since I started here at The Music Room I’ve been on the lookout for the familiar white box with the Audio Research logo.

Today I greedily snagged a Ref 3 preamplifier from the new consignments and buys area, and carefully unboxed it and installed the tubes. What a flawless specimen! This thing needs good music input like a nice car needs high test gas. Since I was also in the middle of testing an Ayre CX-7 CD player I thought it a fitting dancing partner for the AR.

Oh, and these reside on the source side of things, so I am powering the system with PS Audio’s plucky little S300 class A/class D hybrid amplifier. My new DH Labs Air Matrix XLRs connect the ensemble, and DIY speaker cables carry the music.

Want to guess how good this sounds? So good, I will probably sit here for way too long listening and not working. Sorry Josh!

Ayre, Audio Research, PS Audio. Given the wonderful shape of both the Ayre and this Audio Research Ref 3 preamplifier, and the bargain price of a new PS Audio Stellar S300, and not to mention the sparkle and tone from DH Labs’ high value silver cables… Is this not one of the finest starter high end audio systems you can put together??

All that’s missing is a good DAC. And if you’re new here, TMR has a few DACs — take a look!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Diving in deep

By Anonymous -
Image
Vitus Audio RS-100 Stereo Power Amplifier Depth. That’s what you get with a good A/B amp that you just can’t quite touch with even the most excellent Class D. Sorry, it’s the truth. Most Class A/B amps on most loads at most volumes stay in Class A anyway, and there’s no contest. Sure, you can optimize the path of the power to your Class D monoblocks, use isolation bases to minimize vibration, place Shakti Stones or other EMI/RFI filters over the PCBs, put on your voodoo suit and hail the demon gods of audio to deliver Nirvana. Or you can plug in a high quality A/B amp and never look back. That pesky switching frequency and the usual harmonics of Class D just end up getting in the way of the sheer magic that is possible with the world’s best A/Bs. Even if you eliminate the upper harmonics and create a harmonic structure similar to tube amps, as PS Audio does with the Stellar S300 amplifier I use for testing, you can’t quite match the subtle details an A/B brings that
Read more

New heights

By Anonymous -
Image
TAD Evolution One Floorstanding Speakers You never know what a new day will bring, and this one brought me the best speakers I’ve ever heard in my life. No big deal. I’ve heard a lot of great speakers. I’ve listened extensively to PS Audio’s Infinity IRS V system, the Infinity Beta system, and TAD Reference One, and at audio shows I’ve gravitated toward the big speaker rooms and heard Tidals, YGs, massive electrostats like the Martin Logans & Sanders Sound, Focal Grand Utopias and big Wilsons galore. And a whole bunch of others I’m forgetting. I even got a chance to have Arnie Nudell demo his “IRS Killer” speakers for me at his home before his passing. My audio memory of that is brief, so it’s difficult for me to say with 100% certainty that these TAD Evolution One speakers are better than Arnie’s, but the fact that I’m wondering says something about these dynamic speakers from the TAD Lab. Something I’ve noticed here at The Music Room is that many speakers need att
Read more

Home on the (full) range

By Anonymous -
Image
Voxativ AC-4X 8" Full Range Drivers The "Bigger Is Better" (BIB) horn I still remember the day I found the Single Driver Website, which was compiled by James Melhuish a while ago, and of which a remnant still exists on Geocities, here . I was like a pig discovering shit. Something about the science really spoke to me — the lack of crossover and the simplification of design variables combined with geometrically-cool-looking boxes had me transfixed like the Millennium Falcon in a tractor beam. Among the things I learned in my voyage through many styles of DIY full range speaker design is that Zoebel networks shouldn’t be feared — great passive ingredients really do deliver great results — and that raw driver quality plays a huge role in the eventual sound. In all things audio, the less you have to fix, or the less you ask any circuit to try to fix, the better. The less any piece of gear has to “work,” the better. Often when components — especially drive
Read more