Tube Power Amp Reviews

Octave Audio MRE 220 SE monoblock power amplifier Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Digital sources: dCS Vivaldi Apex DAC, Vivaldi Upsampler Plus, Vivaldi Master Clock, and Rossini Transport; EMM Labs DV2 Integrated DAC, Meitner MA3 Integrated DAC; Innuos Statement Next-Gen Music Server; Small Green Computer Sonore Deluxe opticalModule (2); Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with SOtM sCLK-OCX10 Master Clock and sPS-500 power supply; Broadcom/Avago AFBR-5718PZ 1GB SX-SFP, Gen 5 Fiber Optic modules; Nordost QNet switch and QSource linear power supplies (2); Sonore Audiophile Linear Power Supply; Synology 5-bay 1019+ NAS with Ferrum Hypsos linear/switching hybrid power supply; Linksys MR9000 mesh router and Arris modem; Apple 2023 iPad Pro and 2017 MacBook Pro.
Power amplifiers: Dan D'Agostino Momentum M400 MxV monoblocks, Accuphase A-300 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia V with Wilson LōKē subwoofers.
Cables: Digital: Nordost Odin 1, Odin 2, and Valhalla 2 (USB and Ethernet), Frey 2 (USB adapter); AudioQuest WEL Signature; Wireworld Platinum Starlight Cat8 (Ethernet), OM1 62.5/125 multimode duplex (fiberoptic). Interconnect (XLR): Nordost Odin 2 and Blue Heaven subwoofer, AudioQuest Dragon, Canare (subwoofers). Speaker: Nordost Odin 2, AudioQuest Dragon. AC: Nordost Odin 2, Valhalla 2, Valhalla 1; AudioQuest Dragon and Firebird; Kimber PK10 Palladian. Umbilical cords: Ghent Audio Canare on NAS; QSource Premium DC cables with Lemo terminations for QSources; SOtM sPS-500 umbilical cable for SOtM Master clock.
Accessories: Grand Prix Monza 8-shelf double rack and amp stands, 1.5" Formula platform; Symposium Ultra Platform; Nordost 20 amp QB8 Mark III, QKore 1 and 6; Titanium and Bronze Sort Kones, Sort Lifts; Stromtank S 2500 Quantum MKII power generator, SEQ-5 Audio Distribution Bar; AudioQuest Niagara 7000 and Niagara 5000 power conditioners, NRG Edison outlets, JitterBugs; Environmental Potentials EP2050EE surge protector/ filter; Wilson Audio Pedestals; A/V RoomService Polyflex Diffusers; Resolution Acoustics room treatment; Stillpoints Clouds (8); HRS DPX-14545 Damping Plates; Marigo Aida CD mat.
Dedicated listening room: 20' L × 16' W × 9'4" H.—Jason Victor Serinus

COMPANY INFO
Octave Audio
Reutäckerstrasse 5
76307 Karlsbad
Germany
(847) 730-3280
octave.de/en
ARTICLE CONTENTS

COMMENTS
cognoscente's picture
Submitted by cognoscente on June 20, 2024 - 10:34am

I always have to laugh when someone has a (way too) expensive stereo set and then streams music, that's like a Ferrari on a bumpy dirt road, then you don't understand it

helomech's picture
Submitted by helomech on June 20, 2024 - 12:34pm

…with performance as consistently as this reviewer does, he/she has zero comprehension of what constitutes HiFi sound. Perhaps the professional whistling took an unexpected toll on those ear drums.

Jason Victor Serinus's picture
Submitted by Jason Victor Serinus on June 20, 2024 - 11:08pm

Did you hear how wonderful these amps sounded at AXPONA?

teched58's picture
Submitted by teched58 on June 21, 2024 - 7:07am

It's an expensive shot.

Glotz's picture
Submitted by Glotz on June 21, 2024 - 11:39am

You need to hear 'em before you pass whatever judgment...

Theory of value doesn't work in the real world. Thanks for trolling.

supamark's picture
Submitted by supamark on June 20, 2024 - 4:23pm

Streaming is perfect - name the service and version of the track(s) and anybody can listen to the exact same music/mastering/format version as the reviewer and compare their experience. Same goes when auditioning speakers at a dealer. I personally find it annoying when a reviewer mostly uses vinyl records I don't own, it's literally useless info to me. I don't have the same 'table, phono pre, cart, or records so I have no sonic reference at all. They may as well be dancing about architecture.

It's hella great when I want to listen to random songs I don't want to buy like 1 hit wonders from 20+ years ago. There's also a lot of music that cannot be had physically, either because it was never physical or it's rare and out of print like a lot of the actually good 80's music.

People should also keep in mind, when reviewing audio components you are actually constrained in your equipment choices because of consumer familiarity and translation to their systems, and it also sort of "marks" what type of audiophile the reviewer is (tubes vs transistors, etc). Especially true for speakers, unless you can write like Art Dudley (none of us here can).

cognoscente's picture
Submitted by cognoscente on June 21, 2024 - 1:14am

Data traffic is the largest cost item for those music providers, so they have a vested interest in not stream you the heaviest/highest quality files, which they don't do. Simple, isn't? Do they stream your 1.2GB (DSD) files? No. Or 70mb (HiRes PCM) or 40mb (44.16 PCM)? (depending on the length of the song of course) No, they send something like 15mb files. Other hi-fi stereo sites are clear about this, where you can read that a physical CD still sounds better than streamed so-called HiRes music, regardless of where you stream it from. Same with film, physical 4k Blu-ray looks better than any streamed film. Buying music files and therefore playing them in a "closed system"* (without all the internet noise and other internet issues that you bring in with streaming) is always the best. Because everything that is no longer in the music file (due to excessive packing and unpacking) is no longer audible. Once lost, remains lost.

* except the power supply

hb72's picture
Submitted by hb72 on June 21, 2024 - 2:28am

... where to start to object.

just one thing to start with: red-book CD music read from CD has very little redundancy info compared to an official wav file or streamed flac or ogg file. so missing or misreading bits goes unnoticed on CD-players more often than on streamed flacs.
Devices (streamers, even dacs) must understand the file format: there is no lossy flac format: so you may need to wait a second more to play the file, if your connection is weak, but there is no such thing as an unnoticed lower bitrate than the official one. At least with Flac.

I occasionally compare scanned cds with Qobuz versions: very interesting, because the results vary with the scanning software for some reason: EAC sounds different from dBpoweramp (the latter softish/analog, the former slams harder but more prone to cast a somewhat digital atmosphere), Qobuz somewhere in the middle. how come?

[edited].

cognoscente's picture
Submitted by cognoscente on June 21, 2024 - 2:58am

I do not know either. I can only rely on my reason and ears. So I asked myself why do they call lossless lossless? ".LOSS LESS !" "LESS !" And not lossnothing? It is already in the name, a name chosen very consciously. Furthermore, I swear by uncompressed music files (AIFF), not those compressed squeezed (streamed) music files. Why compress at all if it's not necessary? There is a reason for compression. Ultimately, that is cost savings and not quality improvement. Anyway, it just sounds fundamentally right in my home, free of any stress and free of a pinched cold "digital" sound (that I hear to often at friends or even at dealers). At home voices sound like real voices, piano sounds like a real piano. And not as digitally and electronically reproduced music.

hb72's picture
Submitted by hb72 on June 21, 2024 - 3:19am

that is great. You might as well try ALAC (the Flac equivalent in the Apple bubble): there is compression with loss of information ("lossy" as in mp3s, or apple's aac format), and there is compression that eliminates lots of redundancy, like zipping a file without loss of information, once unpacked. (e.g. a large *.tif file that contains only 1 colour information but has many many pixels: you'd be surprised how small it gets, if it is reduced to this one color bit code and its size information, plus a bit of overhead.)

This is fundamental to understand. Flac or ALAC has no lossy compression, all compression levels fully restore the full original info, they only differ in effort & time needed to compress from WAV or AIFF.

Some might hear the effects of a more busy streamer cpu (busy with file extraction, but extraction is really the fastest, least cpu intense part) - anyway I do not hear that (on my streamer).

supamark's picture
Submitted by supamark on June 21, 2024 - 10:48am

that your hearing isn't up to snuff, but that's life. Oh, and I think DSD sounds smeared like stucco. I own like 1k records/CDs and I'm not forking over more money to replace what I already own with a remaster that probably won't sound as dynamic.

btw, lossless compression is just that, lossless. Words have meanings. The only difference is the mastering - streamers will alter the volume of tracks (down) if they're over the streamers LUFS limit (generally around 14 LUFS). Reviewers will continue to use streaming for reasons I've given before - consumer ability to listen to identical versions.

Sometimes the CD does sound better than streaming, but not for the reason you think. Again, it goes back to (re)mastering. It's hard to find the original release version of most albums, which until the mid 90's always had more dynamic range. Pretty much every 24/192 release corrects that.

One thing for the future, don't argue with recording engineers about sound. You will lose because your hearing acuity and ability to discern fine details will never be as good as someone who spent their late teens/early twenties altering their brain with sound. Your brain stops maturing around age 24. I spent those years listening critically as my job (1st classical and jazz, then rock - brain plasticity FTW).

Glotz's picture
Submitted by Glotz on June 20, 2024 - 1:20pm

It's almost time for your naps!

Put your mats down on the ground and drift off to the sleepy land where you, the children, are right and rule the world with your magic wands of ignorant bliss.

PS- I would love a chance to see and hear your stereo systems and laugh, laugh, laugh....

volvic's picture
Submitted by volvic on June 21, 2024 - 5:57am

Enjoyed this one, kicked my feet up, and read a satisfying review of an interesting product. Have to listen to this amp. Many thanks JVS.

Jason Victor Serinus's picture
Submitted by Jason Victor Serinus on June 21, 2024 - 8:54am

jason

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