MY HIFI BLOG

Makes? Rebrands chinese models you mean.

He was writing about icon audio and lockdown on his own site a fortnight ago so I doubt hes sold it.

Please don't say he rebrands Chinese stuff. That's completely spoiled things for me. So he uses Chinese designed amps and passes them off as his own?

I'm not sure how true it is currently certainly 3 years ago you could find most of those amps direct elsewhere with different bells and whistles.

I'm not sure about David Shaw but I have done some research into Mark Manwaring-White at Ming Da as I will be trying out a phono stage that he has moddified next week. As well as being involved with Ming Da who build amps and phono stages of his design in China Mark also hand builds bespoke valve products in Malvern under his own name Audio detail. To my eye's it looks like both he and David Shaw are highly skilled and extremely professional electronics engineers who have been employed by these two hugely successful Chinese audio companies to both design and retail their products here in the west. So rather than 'rebranding' Chinese models they both have a huge imput in to their design, manufacture and sale and so are not passing off these Chinese designs as their own by rebranding them at all.

Perhaps being less judgemental about a whole countries audio products you should actually try some as your missing out imo. Over the past 5 years or so I've owned quite a few Chinese audio items all of which have been great value the Yaqin EL34 integrated I owned was a cracking amp and the liitle Breeze Audio D Class I have is possibly the hifi bargain of this century so far and that's without going into the DACs and DAP's I've owned and still own that are all first rate.

The Khozmo should reveal more detail in your system. I would change the Klotz interconnects next to an OCC cable such as the Spotfire I/C's.

After lots of uming and aahing I've finally decided to go with a Quad Elite QSP power amp and BTE Designs Passive pre amp. I know Quad has a bit of a pipe and slippers reputation with some but without a Quad pre to hold it back to my ears it is far from it and has the power (250 watts into 4ohms) to drive my Dynaudios better than any amp I've had since I have owned them and that includes every Naim 250 from Bolt Down to DR and also a Nap300.

At the moment I'm temporarily using a little Tisbury mini and it's given me enough of an insight into what a passive can do with this Quad power amp to convince me that this is the way I want to go. I was offered a good deal on a used Khozmo but unfortunately it was the 20K version which isn't a good match fot the 10K Quad so I've decided to go with a custom built BTE Designs passive. My budget wasn't huge after I'd paid for the standard base unit so rather than go for a mediocre stepped volume Anthony advised me to go with a Tkd 2cp2511 mechanical pot which is is reckoned to be exceptional unit in the right hands so along with some silver wiring 2 inputs and one fixed one variable output that was my budget blown.

I've also gone for a 50cm pair of Neoctech UPOCC i/c's to go between the BTE and the Quad. I'm still using the Naim Nac A5 left over from those Naim amps so I'll probably sell that and replace it with something more suitabe.

Bravo!

I know of a few fans of the BTE passive preamp and the new Quad amps appear to not suffer that syrupy lethargy of yesteryear.

What I'm most pleased about is that you've taken the first baby steps into a decent set of Cables.

The Neotech are decent, ive made a few pairs myself, and they are reasonably easy to afford for the common man and give a good glimpse into the benefit of good copper.

Hope you are very happy when the new set up is all up and running together

Impedance matching is the key but he's got that covered already.

Yes I got my reccomendation on AoS from Scotty who has a Bob Dylan Avatar.

You've made the right first move to get some OCC stuff in your system.

That's what matters

And thank you again as you stated Anthony has been first class so far keeping me updated of even the smallest details. 

I have been offered a used standard Khozmo on approval because it's the 10K version and my amp's input is 10K but Anthony assures me that a slight impedance mismatch can be negated by using the correct cables.

Anyway it will be very interesting to see how the Khozmo compares to the BTE Passive. The same guy aslso had a Mod Squad line stage passive but it was 20k.

Yes so I can test them side by side.

Khozmo has just arrived and first physical impressions are very good it's built like a brick and out of quality materials. No lights or displays of any kind so no need for any mains hook up at all.

I'm guessing it's one of the earlier models as it has the Khozmo brand name engraved onto a small name plate between the two dials apart from that it is physically the same as the new silver models. I'll hook it

later and see how it sounds no Neotech cables yet but I have some 50cm Cambridge Audio Studio Reference in a draw that I can use.