Thanks, I’ll try out low gain again on the Stellia.
So far, I love the Soloist with my VO, and prefer it to my Lyr 3 and Asgard 3. And I’ve preferred the Stellia on the Lyr 3.
Due to lack of cables (I didn’t want to buy more until I know I’m keeping it), I’ve been using my Pendant’s interconnects for the Soloist, but over the weekend, I’ll re-arrange the cables and do a shoot out between the Pendant and the Soloist. I have a feeling that they’ll have a lot in common, but I suspect the Pendant will have a faster sound.
I don’t have any balanced cables. Also, I have a switch between my BF2 and my amps, which makes it so much easier to switch between them, so I want to keep my connections single ended.
I wish they’d offered a single ended Soloist with full power available like they did with the Conductor, and I almost bought the Conductor and just couldn’t justify spending the extra money.
But that’s nit-picking. So far I love the amp and I think it will be a great solid state complement to the Pendant.
The general rule with balanced amps (assuming they are actually true differential) is that the balanced outputs should be used.
Even when a balanced amp has a single ended output some manufacturers will say that you won’t get the full sonics of the amp using the single ended output.
I don’t know if this holds for the Burson, and of course it’s a whole can of worms due to cables and the rest of the chain, but it might be worth seeing if anyone has compared the different outputs.
Edit: I looked at the Conductor and I couldn’t find one where the XLR and rca outputs had the same power. The ones with the same power output were not balanced (differential) amps. I might have missed something since the site is a little awkward to navigate.
It does hold true for the Burson according to Burson, and some reviewers have said it sounds better balanced as well.
But, well he can always try balanced with the Burson down the road, and if it sounds as good as the Pendant single-ended then I think that’s a win-win.
I just meant that in a perfect world, they would have offered a single ended Soloist that had the same 8W power as the balanced Soloist. For example, the single ended Conductor 3R outputs the same 7.5W as the balanced Conductor 3XR (through XLR). Since my whole system is single ended, I didn’t really need balanced, and it’s a little annoying that I need to get new cables to get access to the additional power.
I had asked Burson if the sound quality was going to be OK if I used the RCA input and XLR output and they said it would be fine, so that’s what I’ll do for now. I do have the stock XLR cable for my Stellia in a box somewhere, so maybe I’ll find it and see if there’s a difference with that.
BTW, one of the reasons I decided to go with the Soloist over the Conductor was that the Passion For Sound reviewer said that he tried both RCA and XLR and didn’t notice any SQ differences, and he liked it so much that he bought one. I really like that reviewer, and I’d rate his smooth delivery second only to @Resolve, who really is the king of reviewers (no offence to others on this forum).
FYI…for those using the balanced-in of the Soloist, this is the right orientation (in case you didn’t know; cause I didn’t know). Guess Burson made a whoopsie when they didn’t label which is L and R. Luckily, I didn’t mix them up on first attempt.
I also wanted to thank you for the tip about using low gain for my Stellia. I have volume at 52 (right after that weird volume jump) and it sounds better than before, definitely not laid back. I don’t know what was wrong before, so maybe you’re right and it hadn’t warmed up yet.
