DAY 2: with speakers. Fostex Sigma 6" BLHs + sub.

Wow, I am amazed. Couldn't wait to get home, eat, and put kids to bed to listen again. Threw in a regular in my rotation (Talking Heads - Little Creatures - the remaster from about eight years ago.)

Rag is astonishing. Bass, mids, treble. Love the bite. Love the clang and attack of metal percussion. Love the smack of the snares. If you want something forgiving, this amp is not for you. Yet so smooth. No grain. Electrons sliding on smooth ice rather than being forced through a layer of sand. I've heard many claims of other amps being "transparent", but that usually equates to antiseptic or sometimes just downright nasty (blaming the source, transducers, whatever, etc.) I've never heard anything transparent, but the beauty of the Rag's treble is its honesty without adding anything. It's like the real thing. Real rock concerts, in the local tavern, with a ton of treble, a lot of treble energy, cymbals crashing, drumsticks smacking against the rim of the snare, yet it doesn't hurt.

Mids are not lush. They are not bloomy. But you can hear the smoke arising from David Byrnes' throat. Liquid smoke. Blackness, sounds arising from nothing and decaying back to nothing. Fast. Out of nowhere. So clean - and also the space in between sounds. Bass is nuanced. Varying volumes. Sustain. Timbre, pitch down low - not thuds. You can hear how the bass drums and toms are tuned. I'm sitting in the first row. I close my eyes and realize the stage is deeper than I though yesterday - just that I'm sitting in the front row. Crank it up - loud - louder - not a problem - so refreshing since I've never been table to do that with the flea powered tube amps.

SUBLIME.

Nelson Pass might need to go fuck himself.

DAY 2: snip
…Bass is nuanced. Varying volumes. Sustain. Timbre, pitch down low - not thuds. You can hear how the bass drums and toms are tuned.
snip
SUBLIME.
snip

I wrote this a bit ago…

"For instance the bass now has tonality, which means I can hear the bass notes, as notes and not just low freq whumps or thuds or rumbles…

…Then there is the term holographic that sprang forth due to the solidification, with precision, of the sonic image.  And its not just a 3d image hanging in 3d space.  There is this harmonic convergence thing, where not only is the generated acoustic energy well coupled to each voice but for example it yields being able to hear such things as back up or background vocals, each as a separate and distinct voice unto themselves, and in the bass where the rich harmonic resonances when properly coupled to their parent become ‘whole’ musical voices not just low frequency thrills and ‘effects’."

I do believe we are talking about the same thing just using different words.

To me this is more 'evidence' we are approaching true, fully 120dB capable playback systems.
Which is way kewl… :thumb

JJ

Nelson Pass might need to go fuck himself.

HAH. There are quite a few amp designers that might need to go fuck themselves. I love that the Rag is basically a giant middle finger to lazy companies like Musical Fidelity that just pump out slightly updated versions of the same mediocre boxes year after year with little to no innovation whatsoever.

The guys at Schiit should put the Rag innards in a gold box like DarTZeel and charge $30K for it. I'm sure they could get it, and rave reviews from TAS about what a great value it is.

Marv, I've never seen you praise a product this much before, NEVER. Everything you have describe is how I had described my amp. And if it's just as good or better, although I'm skeptical, it would make my wallet very happy to get rid of my gear that cost almost 4x.

So, speaker amp aside, where does this fall in the world of SS amps? How does it stack up the the venerable GS-X MK2?