MicroZOTL 2

Humm, I don't know. Clearly mine says 2.5A. I guess if I melt the Sigma-11 MOSFETs we'll know.

 

I'm planning on bringing my Torp3 to the Bay Area meet up

 

It can take a while for one's audio opinion to really become so established that everyone knows your biases enough that when you offer your opinion, everyone else has a good benchmark of how it sounds without even hearing it. It took me a bit to start to finalize the sound I was looking for. I got there pretty quickly thanks to everyone here.

 

That is a seriously good, understated and non-pretentious amp. I actually liked it quite a bit!

 

Fantastic!!

 

This guy is innovating....

 

Another rando... I heard it driving LCD-3 classics, LCD-3 fazors, LCD-2's, HD-800's and HD-650's. The deal breaker for me was the treble (as mentioned), lack of body, texture, and tonal weight. It wasn't particularly resolving... trailing notes and decay seemed to lack micro-details, and overall it just sounded flat. I suspect it would have to do with the tubes being used, but it wasn't a knock out. I preferred the Bottlehead Mainline for the HD-800's, which I think is around the same price range. Haven't heard the Torpedo 3, but I'd love to hear it and compare.

There is so much hype for this amp on HF. It just didn't really impress me... but then again, I wasn't taken with the Nighthawks. My preference is the HD-650's driven by Gungnir Multibit and the Zana Deux.

 

Agree on these points... The treble and lack of body are points I've made as well. I also absolutely agree with the observation about trailing notes and decay. I've started to make note of that more recently as well. Tube rolling has improved the first few points, but even with additional body and tonal weight, the low level detail is still lacking.

I'm very much looking forward to heard the Torp3 soon, as I've yet to hear something around $1k that was marked improvement in the areas lacking without giving up something else (for e.g. soundstage).

 

Dick Olsher wrote a review in February's The Absolute Sound, though it's not online yet. Steve Guttenberg wrote a weird review and also mentioned it in his review of the recent-ish Klipsch bookshelf speakers - he really wants it to be a speaker amp. EnjoytheMusic did a review. Herb Reichert's review for Stereophile should be out soon, hopefully in the next issue.

Regarding the linear power supply we put out: It's a good power supply. We believe that it will improve the sound of the amp in some way. If you call Mark, he'll tell you that he doesn't hear a difference but others do. We never planned to make a different power supply than the stock, standard, switching supply we ship it with until it seemed that their was the belief amongst those who chat about these things that a linear power supply was necessary, as well as some other external factors. Some people just don't want a cheap-looking supply sitting behind their desk. I'm probably not going to use one with my own unit, until we have some extras lying around. We have plenty of plans for other things to try to improve the amp without increasing its $1100 base price, which we're trying out now.

-rando who works for Linear Tube Audio

 

I'd definitely go with undecipherable on this one. He does do a head-to-head paragraph against the basically identical in design Schiit Ragnorak, so that's neat.

 

@purrin

It is available for purchase, at urbanhifi.com for the stock unit (stock power supply) or anything else, or at a few dealers as well for the linear power supply included - though those dealers are currently all on the east coast and urbanhifi would be shipping on their behalf anyway. Our goal is to always have units ready to ship, which we've managed to maintain so far (though at points Mark Schneider was ready to take the board out of his personal unit and put it in a new case if another order came in), so the delivery schedule is currently that your amp is usually shipped same business day or next business day, depending on the order. Standard shipping is UPS ground, which takes three days on average to cross the country.

 

Hmm, really?

 

@bazelio a bit of sarcasm. They do both cost more than $1000. There's one similarity.

 

OK. Hah. Well between the article itself and the comment, my head was spinning.

I was going to finish an hour or so of work here before hitting the hay, but I think I'm in no condition to do so.

 

I only got to hear it at CanJam, but my impressions were exactly what @bazelio mentioned, presumably with the stock tubes. Too much treble, a bit thin, lacking in euphony. It didn't help that I had very recently been listening to the Amps & Sound stuff, which is the polar opposite (very warm and musical).

 

Interested to hear your listening notes, @purrin . In its out-of-the-box state, it does have issues. Give the tubes time to cook, and if you have a 12V Sola LPS around, do use it!

As far as the fuss goes... the past 3 days of posts in the HF microZOTL thread have left me very frustrated. I mean it's a good amp, but I simply don't consider some of my observations a matter of opinion. To me they're readily apparent and I don't know how there can be debate, for e.g. on the treble.

Personally, I was on the verge of selling mine. Now I'm on the verge of keeping it. The addition of the LPS and 7062s did change things for me. But... I'm also on the verge of getting the Cinemag T3 kit and dusting off my soldering iron. Plus, every time @Luckbad opens his mouth now, I want a Mogwai. And it all has me thinking that selling it all and just getting a Studio Jr might be the best solution. *sigh*