New Summer Amps: Odyssey Stratos Mono Extreme

aboroth00

As the California summer quickly approaches, I've been looking for an amp which runs cooler than my current DIY Pass Aleph J. The Pass is great for warming the room during the winter and serves as a space heater/amp, but during the ~90F summer without air conditioning in the room, it literally cooks me.

I received the Odyssey mono's last Thursday and I left them on all weekend to get them warmed up. The Odyssey's all warmed up is only slightly warm to the touch vs the Pass's hand scorching ~150F. The sound is notably different than my Pass Aleph J. To compare the two, I would say the Odyssey has much more of a bass punch and with more extended highs. While I have heard the Odyssey emphasizes the mids, I noticed it wasn't as warm or liquid as the Pass which it is well known for. Dynamics are notably better as well and could probably be attributed to having 200watts on tap vs 30 watts or so. I think the Odyssey's are a much better fit for my speakers and purposes than the Pass. I think the Pass is great for music, however it can feel a little strained at times when being pushed with my relatively inefficient speakers, ~87db/5ohm nominal. I do miss that tubey warmness the Pass imbues, but I think its beaten by the overall slam, dynamic, punch the Odyssey brings to the table for both music and HT.

Maybe some more tube rolling with the BAT VK-3 will solve the warmness issue. Perhaps some mullards are in order?

danz1906

Congrats...............Welcome to the Odyssey Mono club!
I've had my Mono-blocs for 7yrs now.....boy time fly's when your having fun!!!

Obsession18

I recently added an Odyssey Kismet stereo, one of the biggest improvements I noticed over the Parasound 2250 was much tighter bass with alot less overhang, reduced boominess dematically. It is much easier to distingush a bass drum from a bass guitar, not the case with the Parasound. I have found the Kismet to be very neutral, the Parasound struck me as being a bit forward with vocals. Klaus makes a killer product that is priced right.

danz1906

Kismet amps are Awesome.........

Obsession18

danz1906 wrote: »

Kismet amps are Awesome.........

I met Klaus at last years Capitol Audio Fest where I placed my order, he also makes excellent speakers, his room was an enbarassment to all the other way high dollar rooms, crazy good sound. He was also very busy, Sunday is usually the slowest day at these shows and he was getting slammed.

danz1906

Obsession18 wrote: »

I met Klaus at last years Capitol Audio Fest where I placed my order, he also makes excellent speakers, his room was an enbarassment to all the other way high dollar rooms, crazy good sound. He was also very busy, Sunday is usually the slowest day at these shows and he was getting slammed.

I met Klaus when I picked up my Mono-bloc Amps, He's a very nice guy!

aboroth00

It sure does sound nice and that 20 year warranty is nice to fall back on. Have you guys ever sent your amps back to Klaus for a checkup, bias? Did you have Klaus bias your amps to your in wall voltage? That sounds kind of strange to me.

treitz3

Hello, aboroth00 and congratulations on your newest acquisition. Please allow me to offer you a bit of friendly advice. Keep the amp on at all times. Every time you allow it to cool down, I have found that it took an average of three days for it to come back into full operating conditions. Day two seemed to be the worst of the three days. The reason I no longer have mine is because of the sheer amount of lightning storms we have down here in the Carolinas. There are many satisfied Klaus customers here on Club Polk, enjoy.

Tom

aboroth00

treitz3 wrote: »

Hello, aboroth00 and congratulations on your newest acquisition. Please allow me to offer you a bit of friendly advice. Keep the amp on at all times. Every time you allow it to cool down, I have found that it took an average of three days for it to come back into full operating conditions. Day two seemed to be the worst of the three days. The reason I no longer have mine is because of the sheer amount of lightning storms we have down here in the Carolinas. There are many satisfied Klaus customers here on Club Polk, enjoy.

Tom

Thanks Tom,

I have heard Klaus recommending the same thing. I left the amp on over the 3-4 days when I had played with it 2 weekends ago, but have decided to turn them off while I'm out of town for a couple weeks. They run much cooler than my DIY Pass which definitely needed to be turned off when not in use.

Any insight on the bias, in wall voltage service Klaus offers?

Will

Obsession18

aboroth00 wrote: »

It sure does sound nice and that 20 year warranty is nice to fall back on. Have you guys ever sent your amps back to Klaus for a checkup, bias? Did you have Klaus bias your amps to your in wall voltage? That sounds kind of strange to me.

Yes I provided Klaus with my AC voltage readings measured over several days so that he could set the bias. I also leave the amp on all the time, I did loose power about a month ago and it took days for the sound quality to return, the symphonic line caps in my Kismet take forever to regain charge.

drumminman

aboroth00 wrote: »

It sure does sound nice and that 20 year warranty is nice to fall back on. Have you guys ever sent your amps back to Klaus for a checkup, bias? Did you have Klaus bias your amps to your in wall voltage? That sounds kind of strange to me.

I sent my Stratos Stereo with the cap upgrade in to be converted to Dual Mono. Couldn't get it to play with my 2.3TL's so I sent it back and he converted it back to stereo, and totally hot rodded it: Kismet board, Reference Caps (120,000 uF per channel), WBT RCA jacks, two reference grade transformers. He also biased it to the voltage readings I took at different times of day. He was determined to make me happy, and he did.

No matter how hard I push it, it gets barely warm to the touch.