milosz
Member
Audioromy FU29
I had one of these for a while. I tried it on my Quad ESL-57's and it sounded OK but the Quads really want more power.
I tried it on a pair of little Polk RT25i speakers I had, and WOW! What a great sound. Bass wasn't as tight as with a solid state amp on the little Polks, but there must be some kind of synergy between the speaker/amp impedance interaction and so on here, because HOLY COW did the Polks sound different on the FU29. They sounded.... high end, for lack of a better term. Musical, warm, good highs and detail but not at all tizzy, harsh or sibilant. I had no real place in my apartment to use the Polks at all, so I sold them with the amp to someone who just loves them.
Not sure if any normal 2-way would experience a similar synergy with the Audioromy, but you should try it out if you can, the sound was wonderful.
The build quality of the amp is so-so; parts quality is good; power level is reasonable; cosmetics are excellent; sound can be excellent. All that for $450 or so.
Note that although the FU29 (same as 829) is a dual tetrode, and is wired in push-pull in this amp, it is *NOT* run in an ultralinear mode, but in a "pure tetrode" mode. The beam-forming grids are not connected to a tap on the output transformer primary as in ultra-linear designs; instead it just gets DC voltage. Ultralinear mode is a kind of feedback, it reduces distortion an allows higher output power for a given THD. It is not used here, so I suspect the tube is allowed to add some euphonic coloration under certain conditions, which in this case is not a bad thing at all. It allows a lower-cost system to have a little more "musical" sound than it would otherwise. I think in this design, the use of tubes adds a little harmonic sweetener without getting overly romantic, lush or syrupy. There's still detail, but there's some frequency response interaction and mild timbral sweetening that work really well with the right lower-cost speakers to give a very nice system for less than the cost of a fine meal.
Audioromy also have a single-ended 813 design, I wonder how that is.
I had one of these for a while. I tried it on my Quad ESL-57's and it sounded OK but the Quads really want more power.
I tried it on a pair of little Polk RT25i speakers I had, and WOW! What a great sound. Bass wasn't as tight as with a solid state amp on the little Polks, but there must be some kind of synergy between the speaker/amp impedance interaction and so on here, because HOLY COW did the Polks sound different on the FU29. They sounded.... high end, for lack of a better term. Musical, warm, good highs and detail but not at all tizzy, harsh or sibilant. I had no real place in my apartment to use the Polks at all, so I sold them with the amp to someone who just loves them.
Not sure if any normal 2-way would experience a similar synergy with the Audioromy, but you should try it out if you can, the sound was wonderful.
The build quality of the amp is so-so; parts quality is good; power level is reasonable; cosmetics are excellent; sound can be excellent. All that for $450 or so.
Note that although the FU29 (same as 829) is a dual tetrode, and is wired in push-pull in this amp, it is *NOT* run in an ultralinear mode, but in a "pure tetrode" mode. The beam-forming grids are not connected to a tap on the output transformer primary as in ultra-linear designs; instead it just gets DC voltage. Ultralinear mode is a kind of feedback, it reduces distortion an allows higher output power for a given THD. It is not used here, so I suspect the tube is allowed to add some euphonic coloration under certain conditions, which in this case is not a bad thing at all. It allows a lower-cost system to have a little more "musical" sound than it would otherwise. I think in this design, the use of tubes adds a little harmonic sweetener without getting overly romantic, lush or syrupy. There's still detail, but there's some frequency response interaction and mild timbral sweetening that work really well with the right lower-cost speakers to give a very nice system for less than the cost of a fine meal.
Audioromy also have a single-ended 813 design, I wonder how that is.
