Still waiting on the store that sells for this price. Can you offer up your source? Will they ship to Canucks? PM me if you don't want to provide free advertising. Thanks.
George,the place I got it from was in Canada,its called Canadian HIFI ONLINE,if I had it all to do again I would'nt have gotten it from them mine was held up in customs for almost 3 weeks.But you being in Canada it be a problem,they also told me what happened to me never happens I beleive them their feedback is 100% so I guess I still would order from them,they were prepared to send me another amp,so yeah their all good in book.
I have dug a bit, and I see no reason not to order up some of this stuff for a review.
As soon as I sell a couple of spare parts, I will order the integrated and a phono/headphone amp for review. I intend for this to be a small room setup with Apollo and Ling's.
If I can place the tt, then I will add a cart and put the long overdue vpi back into service.
Now to place the ads for the old rotel and a good running ca200 amp...
Yep,Nuck the VK-2100 is killa at its price,but as you know China has many killa's they have the Vincent Hybrid intergratedamp for $550,it costs $1795 from Vincent,but I think Vincent just took a price hike.This particular amp is 150 watts the version their selling us here that was $1795,which I just checked is $1995 now is only 100 watts,but plenty of great deals out there.This is trully a budget unit,but its extremely well built and its very very good,its timing rythum,and midrange scale is as good as I've ever heard for a amp under $1k.
Read a review saying its not worth it. Flimsy construction and built is questionable with genuinosity. Was a week before some guy claimed to be having multiple problems, overheating, input interference, burning smells etc.
To be honest it doesn't look too shiny from the pictures. The binding posts look like the ones on my Yamaha AVR.
Just not one bit interested in the Chinese manufacturers...unless it's done with strict supervision. The Stereophile or Absolute Sound article on the Chinese industry was very interesting. I don't remember which magazine it was and I'm not at home where I can access it. I say to each his own though...not sure I have anything against it fundamentally...just doesn't interest me either. Last time I was at Echo Audio, I listened to the Tannoy Sensys DC1 with a monster Shanling integrated...sounded pretty good but took up more real estate than Rhode Island.
From Tawaun's earlier post that "really big thing" next to the Yavin, I believe is Tawaun's "Bada Purer 3.8SE...a tube Hybrid intergrated amp with a twist it runs in true class A with 80 watts and its switchable to 130 watts in class A/B...weighs about 90 lbs" The thing just behind and above in the picture of the Yaqin I believe is the: "Bada HD-23 top loading tube CDP thats switchable between solidstate and tube outputs."
Excuse me Tawaun for quoting you but I think I got it right.
Art,your opinion is your opinion,but its certainly not set in stone.Yeah the binding posts arent all that great but they grip good with good contact.As far as the Chinese go this little amp beats up on all the Nads and most other budget amps.It seems when the merry-go-round comes around some people are gonna miss it,well im not,the Bottom line is American,Canandian,and British amps just dont offer the goods for lower prices.Do you really think,that Nad,Arcam,Rega,Cambridge,lowerend Naims and most Creeks really do?No they dont they dont play with the Mark Levinton's,Simiaudio's,Pass Labs,Brystons,Plinus's,Mac's,Accuphase's of the world just to name a few,do you really think deep down that they do?China's offer' big boy level performance and the build of the big boys for way way way cheaper that the other usual suspects just dont or cant,its just as simple as that.You can say that its a opinion but we both know that its not.So you and other's can spend your time almost getting to that last level,well China aint waiting brotha no more do we have to hope to hit the lotto for true world class sound,they got what we need right now,whether you wanna realize it or not,I just hope you and others do before the parade goes on by.
I just worry Tawaun. I was tempted myself, certainly. But rightly as you said, Nad will have problems, I actually had two 2100s go faulty, one blew up! I want reliability! What annoys me is poor after service. If something would go wrong, who's there to back of any guarantee etc?
Is this Yaqin really bettering any NAD then?
I'm looking into a musical fidelity x-a2 atm second hand hmm.
I say it is better than the Nads,the build is very good,and apparently it works fine,it drives my Maggie SMGc's with no problems better than anything I've had in the house,of course except for the 3.8SE.So yes I would take the 2100 over all the Nads,its built good for the money,its easy to get faulty units with any brands.
Its for latenite listening,some are built good some are not it usually boosts bass in the 80 to 60 htz region,me persoanlly I've always bipased them,I dont care if its made by Boulder.
Loudness compensation is meant to even out the irregulatrites in our hearing as volume decreases/increases. It is loosely based on the Fletcher/Munson curves which are established standards (more or less) that describe how we hear less at the frequency extremes when the volume is low and gradually those two bands will increase in level to linearity as the volume rises.
The classic example of how Fletcher/Munson works is hearing a train approaching you, then passing you and then receding away from you. Now days when no one takes the train most people can't relate to those ideas but the concept still works - we hear less at the frequency extremes when the volume is lowered.
As you can guess from the example above actual loudness compensation should be a variable which can be increased/decreased along with "volume". Only two companies in modern components ever came close to getting this right. McIntosh and Yamaha tied their volume control to a variable "loudness compensation" control and you used the loudness control to raise and lower the level instead of the volume control. What are you changing anyway? The loudness in the room or the "volume" from the amplifier?
The Yamaha control quickly dissolved into a useless piece of crap that was meant only to give Yamaha components an edge in the demonstration process. I haven't seen any new Mac gear but I think they still use a decent loudness compensation circuit.
Most "loudness" switches were close to useless since they were set at a fixed frequency and a fixed amount of boost. In other words they did not alter the amount of compensation as the level rose or fell. Some circuits only included compensation for the low frequencies which is not a correct "loudness" compensation while others affected both the lower and upper frequency bands. Since a fixed compensation is only correct at one level the point where the actual boost occurred was also not agreed upon by manufacturers and there were numerouns points where the "knee" of the action would start. Some controls affected everything beneath 500Hz while others affected only that information that fell beneath 200Hz. A few compensation circuits affected only those frequenicies above 10kHz while others dipped down into the 2kHz range. Some had a mild amount of boost (+6dB) while others offered excessive amounts (+24dB) that made the compensation all but useless for anything other than adding lots of bass to blow up your speakers. Some controls affected the high and low frequencies with a different amount of compensation at each end which is on the right track but still useless when the amount of compensation is fixed and the knee remains at the same point no matter the level. About the only thing these manfacturers agreed upon was that loudness compensation was dialed out of the volume control by the 12 O'Clock point on the vc. Given the fact that component outputs are variable and speaker sensitivity is variable, this made the entire idea of simple loudness switches a laughable matter by the time high end audio got around to the simpler is better approach.
Stick "Fletcher/Munson curves" into a search engine and read about how your system should operate.
