So, what's the story on these?

nooshinjohn
nooshinjohn Posts: 25,420
edited August 2010 in 2 Channel Audio
Nice looking Monarchy Monoblocks, but I have never heard of them. Does anyone know about these?


http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstran&1283210685
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,165
    edited July 2010
    nooshinjohn wrote: »
    Nice looking Monarchy Monoblocks, but I have never heard of them. Does anyone know about these?


    http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstran&1283210685


    My brother had a pair and they were on my short list of amps to own. Very sweet sounding single ended amps that can be run in stereo or mono. They are smaller in size compared to a full sized amp and they deliver high current.

    One of these days I'm going to buy a single SM70 run it in stereo with a nice tube pre for my office rig.

    These are high end amps that sound fantastic. The "Pro" model is the better model to look for if buying used. The current version is even better. They have great customer service as well. Right up there with Polk as far as CS.

    H9

    P.s. Try doing a Google search there are some very good reviews out there.
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • TECHNOKID
    TECHNOKID Posts: 4,298
    edited July 2010
    I am not familiar with the brand but they indeed look like fine quality pieces :cool:
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  • zingo
    zingo Posts: 11,258
    edited July 2010
    Very nice indeed.
    Jake
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  • RuSsMaN
    RuSsMaN Posts: 17,987
    edited July 2010
    Got to demo a pair on my Fred Arrays when I hosted a Lone Star Bottle Head meet a couple years back. Good, solid, clean sand power.

    They sounded fine to me, but for a lot of people the jury is still out on negative feedback. Some think the right amount is a good thing, and you really don't want an amp with none.

    As far as build, second to none - best thing to do is get your ears on a pair, and if you can't, just buy 'em right so you have room to get them down the road if they don't blow your skirt up.

    Cheers,
    Russ
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,165
    edited July 2010
    At that price I can guarantee they have negative feedback. Probably more local than global. When most manufacturer's say no negative feedback they mean no global feedback think Nelson Pass's STASIS circuit.

    The only sand amp I know of right now that has no negative feedback at all is this

    The reason I mention this is because these sound like really sweet sand amps not amps w/o negative feedback. The "No Negative Feedback" marketing is very much like other amp manufacturer's touting they are "class A" when the line is fuzzy as to how one can define class A, same with negative feedback. Many designers feel if they keep the feedback "local" rather than "global" they label it a no feedback design.

    Anyways, you won't be disappointed and despite their modest size and output they can bring it.

    Again, they have outstanding customer service.

    H9
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,165
    edited July 2010
    In fact I found this in a professional review:

    The amplifier is a class-A design that eschews the use of any global feedback, although some local feedback is employed. In spite of this, distortion (THD) is reportedly held to below 0.01% at rated output. Monarchy claims that due to the zero-feedback design, dynamics are unbridled and the amp exhibits very clean clipping when overdriven. This should translate into an amplifier that subjectively sounds more powerful than its specs would indicate.
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • markmarc
    markmarc Posts: 2,309
    edited July 2010
    I agree the SM70 pro's are the way to go. I've heard them twice now and both times they impress, especially at their price point.
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,165
    edited July 2010
    The only negative I can say about the earlier SM70 and also earlier SM70 pro's is they have a high input impedance and can be noisy with std gain pre-amps. Low gain or passive pre-amps work best overall. I believe on the PRO's you can have the factory add a resistor to lower the input impedance to better match a std. gain pre-amp.

    They may have addressed this issue with this years model.
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • cstmar01
    cstmar01 Posts: 4,424
    edited July 2010
    these look very nice for the price. For a bedroom system these would be great......hmmm might have found something to pair with the 15TL's....
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  • FTGV
    FTGV Posts: 3,649
    edited July 2010
    RuSsMaN wrote: »
    ... the jury is still out on negative feedback. Some think the right amount is a good thing.
    Yeah it's only one aspect and there are some excellent sounding examples of both minimal feedback designs(like Pass's)and those that employ global feedback(ie.ML,Bryston and MF).I have some Class D modules that despite the fact they use very high levels of feedback and measure poorly on the test bench they are still remarkably musical sounding when mated with the right speaker.
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  • cstmar01
    cstmar01 Posts: 4,424
    edited August 2010
    has anyone experience with these and SDA 1C's and how the pairing went? Been thinking about picking a pair of these up for the 1C's I got or maybe a used stingray integrated for the tube flavor.....
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,165
    edited August 2010
    cstmar01 wrote: »
    has anyone experience with these and SDA 1C's and how the pairing went? Been thinking about picking a pair of these up for the 1C's I got or maybe a used stingray integrated for the tube flavor.....

    I agree with Sean (Zero) and make sure your 1C's are the vintage that can use the AI-1 because you'll need one if you get a pair of SM70's.

    Stingray would also be a great choice, but comparing that to the Monarchy's is apples and oranges.

    H9
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • Face
    Face Posts: 14,340
    edited August 2010
    I ran a Stingray on SRS 2's for a while and it was a great combo.
    "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." Friedrich Nietzsche
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,967
    edited August 2010
    heiney9 wrote: »
    At that price I can guarantee they have negative feedback. Probably more local than global. When most manufacturer's say no negative feedback they mean no global feedback think Nelson Pass's STASIS circuit.

    The only sand amp I know of right now that has no negative feedback at all is this

    The reason I mention this is because these sound like really sweet sand amps not amps w/o negative feedback. The "No Negative Feedback" marketing is very much like other amp manufacturer's touting they are "class A" when the line is fuzzy as to how one can define class A, same with negative feedback. Many designers feel if they keep the feedback "local" rather than "global" they label it a no feedback design.

    Anyways, you won't be disappointed and despite their modest size and output they can bring it.

    Again, they have outstanding customer service.

    H9

    My Butler amp states it has no negative feed back,global. As Russ says,the jury is still out if thats a good thing. I understand the why's of it,but don't really think it makes that big of a difference unless your talking the extremes at either end.
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,165
    edited August 2010
    It does make a big difference if you have the rest of the circuit correct. The simpler the better as is using as few gain stages as possible. I;m not saying this is an absolute because there are really very few SS amps that don't have a small amount of negative feedback, it's a tool, but many mass produced amps use it to correct, cover up for cost cutting measures. It takes much care as well as cost to design and implement a very linear circuit. The more linear the circuit is out of the gate, the less need for negative feedback. Here's a great article that addresses the issue.

    http://www.passlabs.com/pdfs/articles/distortion_and_feedback.pdf



    H9
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • cstmar01
    cstmar01 Posts: 4,424
    edited August 2010
    Thanks for the info. I know the stingray is a totally different beast, but was thinking still of doing the tubed pre with SS amp as I normally like the combo. Its just going to depend on how much room I have for all of it so these would be great for a small amp idea.

    and I'm not looking to move mountains of air with huge SPL's with these or anything. I just want something sweet sounding that would be good for a 2nd system and save on space.
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