Cyclone

Inverted Variations on a clone?

Part 4: Listening

Last modified: 13-Dec-2004

Listening Session

Today Jerry and I decided to listen to the three clones in our house in order to determine the final designs to use for the Cyclone. We started of by listening to the Vision/B&W speakers (the smallest on the photo) connected to the Cyclone. Both Jerry and I liked the sound but we thought there was too much "boom" in the sound. We therefore connected the GeenKloon to hear it play in the same setup. Nop, no difference, so it had to be the speakers.

This could be caused by not having the Visions put on spikes, but as B&W speakers at that time were famous for sounding brown, so we needed an alternative. but as others have remarked before: The LM3875 does not like low impedance loads and my Elacs are not easy to drive, so these speakers were not the match we're looking for. Therefore Jerry and I took my Tannoy speakers downstairs from the study and installed them in the living room (notice the piece of wood under the speakers to protect the floor from spike marks). The Tannoys have an nice 6 ohms flat impedance and with their sensitivity of 89dB they match well with tube amps like my UL40. And so they do with gainclones: Ohh man, this was an improvement!

Well we switched back and forth between GeenKloon, Cyclone and Gainclown, and to be honest we liked the sound of each one of them. The Geenkloon and the Cyclone have a little more control, which is no surprise as they are based on the LM3875 chip where the Gainclown is based on the LM1875 with only half the power.

Fortunately the sound of the Cyclone boxes was very good, and at least as good as its two brother systems.

© Maarten@Platenspeler.com, Oct 2003, 2006