Kicking the tires: Stereomour or (SEX + Quickie + upgrades)?

[rif]

Sometime in the next few months, I may get the $ together for a purchase.  I thought the Stereomour was a step up from SEX + upgrades, but not sure anymore.

They would be used with my Orcas (Left/Right only, I also have a center!!) and a Dayton Audio Titanic sub.  Right now everything goes through my AVR receiver, with or without Audyssey room correction. Since the same speakers will have dual use (powered by AVR OR Bottlehead), I'll jury rig something.

I'm not a very critical listener.

Subwoofer hookup can get tricky since the Stereomour doesn't have line-outs. But the Quickie feeding the SEX 2.1 has them.

Option 1: Stereomour + Base* = $860
Option 2: SEX 2.1 + C4S + Base* + Quickie + PJCCS + Base* = $900
* means a beautiful Base from Blumenstein to match the Orcas

So basically same total cost.

I'm leaning towards the Stereomour despite the subwoofer challenges

Thoughts?

-david

[Paul Birkeland]

Hello David,

It is not overly complex to change one of the Steremour inputs to a subwoofer output.

While the SEX amp is ridiculously capable of amazing resolution, the additional power of the 2A3 and the finesse obtained with a directly heated tube will lead to better performance when compared with the SEX amp (but the Steremour will not be quiet enough to drive headphones).

-PB

[Doc B.]

Stereomour

[Paul Joppa]

Way back when, Doc B challenged me to come up with a "SEX amp using a DHT". This was when the SEX was monoblocks with parallel 6DN7s per channel, and only the Afterglow had a DHT. That turned into the Paramour, released in 2000 I think. The whole idea was that DHTs seemed to have a sound that indirectly-heated cathodes could not quite deliver. We pretty much all agreed that the DHT feature was worthwhile, and the Paramour became my first complete design for Bottlehead.

That opinion has not changed since. Doc B was the motive force behind the BeePre as well, for the same reason, and IMHO he's right again. So yeah, I also say go with the 2A3. There are three ways to use it with subs; perhaps I should write up a simple white paper on the subject since it has come up a few times.

[rif]

A trifecta of first responses!

Seriously though, I can think of 3 ways to hook up a sub.

1) run stereomour's speaker out to orca and stereromour speaker out to sub amp's high level inputs.
2) run stereomour's speaker out to sub amp's high level inputs, run sub amp's high level outputs to orcas
3) modify stereomour to have line level outputs and send that to sub

[Bill Chase]

Paul,
   I'd love to read the white paper you describe.  I'm still trying to decide on a long-range vision for my setup and would value your thoughts.
Cheers,
Bill