Stereomour vs SEX vs Seductor/Smash

[denti alligator]

As loudspeaker amps I'm wondering how these compare. The price suggests this order: SEX < Stereomour < Seductor/Smash. Could the BH folks comment on the differences in sound. Thanks.

[Paul Birkeland]

The SEX is both a speaker and a headphone amp, and as a speaker amp, it's going to give you a very low noise floor, but not a lot of power.  This amp also certainly offers the fewest tube rolling options, which will drive some people nuts. 

The Stereomour will sound quite a bit better than the SEX amp, being a DHT amp.  Its noise floor is a bit higher, as it uses AC on the filaments, but it gives you more power and several inputs.  Because of its design, the Stereomour can clip quite hard on transient peaks without bothering the listener.  Tube rolling options are incredibly broad, though rolling 2A3's can get expensive.

The Smash/Seductor gives about the same power as the Stereomour, but with more gain and more flexibility for upgrades.  The Seductor won't quite have the DHT sonic purity of the Stereomour, but it will work better with many modern speakers that have better bass response from an amp with more damping than a Stereomour or SEX amp.  The Seductor also offers a low noise floor.  Clipping performance with the Seductor is somewhat marginal, after about 6 Watts, the triode distortion spectrum slips away and distortion becomes apparent.  Tube rolling options for the Seductor are vast (not so much for the Smash).

[denti alligator]

Thanks, PB! I assume, then, that the Paramount/BeePre combo would outperform all of these on all levels.

Also, which would sound best with the Blumenstein Orcas?

[Paul Birkeland]

Yes, Paramonut and BeePre will be more power and refinement across the board.

Any of the above will work well with Orcas. 

-PB

[Horatio]

I will try and answer this from personal experience as I have recently become the proud owner of both a BeePre / Paramount combo and a Stereomour. I also purchased Orca's + Dungeness and Thrashers from Blumenstein audio. I am planning on doing a proper write up of my experience but in short:

Both the BeePre / Paramount and the Stereomour sound great with the Orca's. My personal opinion is that while the Orca's sound good stock they sound absolutely amazing once you drop a Dungeness sub into the mix.

While the BeePre / Paramounts do sound better, the Stereomour gets you a LONG way towards that lofty goal at a fraction of the cost - my non scientific initial impression is that my Stereomour (stock tubes) gets me 80+% of the performance for 25% of the cost of my BeePre + Paramount + Upgraded 300B's. Thats not to say I would swap my BeePre / Paramount combo, not on your life - it is just sublime, however if I was on a slightly tighter budget I would not hesitate to purchase the Stereomour safe in the knowledge that what I was getting was going to sound awesome and be a phenomenal bang for my buck!

In terms of volume and being able to fill a room with sound my stock Stereomour in 2A3 configuration paired with my Orca's + Dungeness can easily fill a 4m x 4m room with 50% of the volume dial giving me a room full of sound at a decent level that I think most would objectively class as 'loud' and with the dial at 80+% you are going to be shouting over the music to be heard in the same room.

The BeePre / Paramount combo is clearly louder and I am planning to take advantage of that by moving it into a larger room at 8m x 4m, however my view is that even then the Stereomour / Orca / Dungeness combo would likely cover the majority of my use cases.

I am going to post a more detailed comparison in a few days once I have had a chance to test both setups in the larger room. I was also listening to the Stereomour on the Thrashers today and that was a whole lot of fun!!!

Bill

[denti alligator]

If I wanted to try the Stereomour, what options are there for attaching a Crack as headphone amp to it? There aren't two outputs like with the Smash/BeePre, are there?

[Horatio]

You can use a pair of RCA Phono splitter plugs and put your main source to both the Crack and Stereomour or you can modify the Stereomour design to add a line audio out after the selector switch that will let you switch between Crack and Stereomour retaining full source selection via the Stereomour.

I did the latter and have just posted a guide to doing it in the Stereomour forum. It was an easy modification to make and I highly recommend it!

Bill

[Paul Birkeland]

You can also drive the Stereomour with the Crack.

-PB

[denti alligator]

You can also drive the Stereomour with the Crack.

-PB

How?

[Paul Birkeland]

Use a 1/4" TRS to RCA cable out of the Crack and into the Stereomour.

[denti alligator]

Horatio, do you get any sonic benefit from your Stereomour/Crack setup? That is, does the Stereomour act as a preamp, or does it by pass its circuitry completely and go straight to the Crack?

[Horatio]

The Stereomour is simply bypassed, the only benefit I get is using the Stereomours switching capability to select which of the 3 inputs I want to send to the Crack. The line-out to the Crack comes right after the RCA-in to Stereomour selector switch stage and is completely passive.

By way of comparison when I use my BeePre / Paramount combo the output to the crack comes at the output stage and therefore you do get all the BeePre goodness crossing over into the Crack.

Bill

[denti alligator]

Yeah, and that's another reason I'd like to use the Paramount/BeePre setup, eventually. At this point I won't be getting either. Some day...