Post by danvu on Jun 19, 2012 1:40:00 GMT -5
Hah, finally a forum for Monarchy fans. So here is my story:
I first had a pair of Emotiva UPA-1 amps and used a Harman Kardon 3490 receiver as preamp. They sounded very good driving my Martin Logan Vistas. However, I had mild fatigue/headache listening them for long hours. So I bought the Modwright LS100 tube preamp to tame the brightness. Worth to mention that I tried a couple of well regarded solid state preamps and they didn't fix the problem. So LS100 didn't just take away the brightness, it also improved the sound tremendously, soundstage, imaging, etc. However, it still didn't sound quite full, organic, engaging, emotional with sweet midrange, like the artist singing or the instrument played right there in your room. It was not what I heard at a friend'system consisting of Modwright SWL 9.0SE tube preamp, Sixpak mono tube amps and Classe' CA300 solid state amp that I use as reference system. Little details were either not there or subtle.
So came the SM-70 PROs. I was looking at a lot of different amps and my friend recommended these. I made an appointment with Mr. Poon and went to his office in south SF for a listening session. I immediately liked what I heard and came home with two SM70 PROS. These amps gave me almost everything I was looking for, probably 95% of my friend' system. I can now spend the whole day listening without any sign of fatigue or headache. At around $1K, for a pair of monoblocks (with Monarchy's direct online discount), I dont think there's anything better than these. I compared the UPA's against the SM70 PRO using the same LS100 and CDP/source. The UPA's are now doing the home theater duty driving my Aperion 633T tower for the l/r channels in my HT room. I still like the UPAs, for HT, but their sound quality is just not in the same league as the SM70 PRO. One time, I actually tried to biamp both the SM70PROs (driving the panels) and the UPAs (driving the woofers) on my Vistas; so I can have the full 120W and 8 output devices of the SM70PRO in bridge mode to each panel. The sound from the panel (highs and mids) improved a bit (vs biamping using two amp modules of one SM70PRO to drive both the panel/woofer per speaker), but I immediately noticed a loss in the sound quality coming out of the woofers. Again, small details like bass string plug, were missing or very subtle. Since the Vista has kinda high crossover point (450Hz) so half of the vocals (especially male singers) is coming out of the woofer and I could hear the unnatural tone from vocals again. So I switched back to using two SM70 PROs and biamp each speaker using the two amp modules on each amp. Everything sounds great again.
Bottom line is I'm very happy that I bought these amps and thanks Mr Poon for offering such a great product at an affordable price that someone on a budget for audio gears like me to be able to obtain and enjoy high quality sound.
I first had a pair of Emotiva UPA-1 amps and used a Harman Kardon 3490 receiver as preamp. They sounded very good driving my Martin Logan Vistas. However, I had mild fatigue/headache listening them for long hours. So I bought the Modwright LS100 tube preamp to tame the brightness. Worth to mention that I tried a couple of well regarded solid state preamps and they didn't fix the problem. So LS100 didn't just take away the brightness, it also improved the sound tremendously, soundstage, imaging, etc. However, it still didn't sound quite full, organic, engaging, emotional with sweet midrange, like the artist singing or the instrument played right there in your room. It was not what I heard at a friend'system consisting of Modwright SWL 9.0SE tube preamp, Sixpak mono tube amps and Classe' CA300 solid state amp that I use as reference system. Little details were either not there or subtle.
So came the SM-70 PROs. I was looking at a lot of different amps and my friend recommended these. I made an appointment with Mr. Poon and went to his office in south SF for a listening session. I immediately liked what I heard and came home with two SM70 PROS. These amps gave me almost everything I was looking for, probably 95% of my friend' system. I can now spend the whole day listening without any sign of fatigue or headache. At around $1K, for a pair of monoblocks (with Monarchy's direct online discount), I dont think there's anything better than these. I compared the UPA's against the SM70 PRO using the same LS100 and CDP/source. The UPA's are now doing the home theater duty driving my Aperion 633T tower for the l/r channels in my HT room. I still like the UPAs, for HT, but their sound quality is just not in the same league as the SM70 PRO. One time, I actually tried to biamp both the SM70PROs (driving the panels) and the UPAs (driving the woofers) on my Vistas; so I can have the full 120W and 8 output devices of the SM70PRO in bridge mode to each panel. The sound from the panel (highs and mids) improved a bit (vs biamping using two amp modules of one SM70PRO to drive both the panel/woofer per speaker), but I immediately noticed a loss in the sound quality coming out of the woofers. Again, small details like bass string plug, were missing or very subtle. Since the Vista has kinda high crossover point (450Hz) so half of the vocals (especially male singers) is coming out of the woofer and I could hear the unnatural tone from vocals again. So I switched back to using two SM70 PROs and biamp each speaker using the two amp modules on each amp. Everything sounds great again.
Bottom line is I'm very happy that I bought these amps and thanks Mr Poon for offering such a great product at an affordable price that someone on a budget for audio gears like me to be able to obtain and enjoy high quality sound.