We will absolutely be at Capitol Audio Fest. We will have all the new Avian Series amps and the Corvus Reference and CeLest' speakers there too. Time to show them off~! The new Soniquil Cables are really great too, very well made and extremely reasonable. Read what everyone is saying about them. We know of more than 30 people that have pulled out multi-thousand dollar cables and replaced them with our sub-$200 ones. The reason is, we were after as close to zero resistance as possible, not signal manipulation. What we got is... clear clean and as close to zero sonic signature as possible. These are phenomenal cables. We will be using ONLY Soniquil cables in our room too. We will bring over a hundred pairs with us to the show also. Last few shows they've been selling out no matter how many we bring. As far as I know not a single cable pair has ever come back.
I'm pretty sure everyone knows about this by now, but tonight I am a little down again - probably for the tenth time actually... revisiting the saddest news in music history. It seems that I cannot escape the thought of it some nights. It actually makes my heart and brain ache and tears flow down my face. Seriously... The loss of nearly half a million of the most iconic recordings in history because of pure greed and mishandling of our music and film heritage. If you guys haven't read this... maybe you shouldn't. It will ruin your day, and quite possibly your year. The fact that it actually happened long ago and was covered up for over a decade is just more of the corporate bullsquat that is involved with this story, and our music/entertainment business. I mean, just the thought of the entire Billie Holliday catalog being gone is one thing, but Etta, Ella and even Judy Garland! Gone forever???!!! Those old masters had information on them that we are not even close to having the technology to retrieve yet. It may take another decade or two to get to where we can actually play back what is on all the old original magnetic tape masters. Knowing this truth alone puts it into a whole other light. The truth is, we are certain that we really cannot yet obtain all the information on magnetic tape masters. We thought we were close, but every time we go back, especially to some of the older stuff, we found that those tapes held so much more information than we ever expected. Though technology is always moving quickly, in some ways, some things are still crawling at a snail's pace because we still don't concentrate on this part of the art fully... yet. Now though, most of the original iconic recordings ever made are all gone - in one fell swoop. When the actual masters are destroyed, all of that original information is most likely gone forever... due to the lack of technology in reproducing the safety copies and digital retrieval. The truth is, those original masters still had more on them. Much more than we ever dreamed. To allow them to be lost is one of the largest crimes in history - especially for people like me that live for the music. How many billions of dollars do you think those recordings were worth? The truth is... no amount of money could touch what they were worth. A thousand years from now people will get pissed off reading this story... if we make it that long.
I recall thinking to myself 'how could this happen?' when the story broke and then being shocked by it's subsequent cover-up. Hopefully some good can come of its tragedy so it doesn't happen again....
A stunning tragedy for sure. Which makes me thankful that for many years now I have been collecting the next best thing -- original LP pressings from a wide variety of genres, going back to the early fifties at least. Many of them records and artists mentioned in the article. And as I continue to upgrade and improve the playback of these original recordings, I keep getting more detail and information that was previously 'hidden' to my ears, a tantalizing indication that yes, there was likely more such subtle information hidden in the master tapes, now lost forever.
Seeing that their MK3 Avian amps have a built in high-pass filter for sub-integration has sparked my interest in maybe moving to tubes. For those who own these amps, is there a huge improvement in SQ between the 3 Avian amps? How do these amps sound with Rock? Do they stay composed at high volume? Does Raven still offer the lifetime warranty?
HiFi: The Raven Audio NIGHTHAWK MKIII Integrated Amp Review. | Steve Huff Photo Here's the first Avian Sereis MK3 review everyone~! A fairly good one I think...
Thanks Gary, sorry it took so long, but all of the stuff going on around here has me jumping. And at 66, I don't jump too well anymore. Anyway, we are taking a pair of the new CeLest' speakers to several reviewers this month so reviews are on the way. We recently got a couple of new reviews (click on the links) on the Nighthawk MK3 and Osprey MK3 too. More are coming, and Stereophile has a Nighthawk MK3 on the way too. They will be doing reviews of our entire lineup in 2020. That should be exciting!
There is a substantial difference in the sound quality, mainly due we think, to the new larger tracings on the PC board, the heavier, thicker more rigid composite board quality, and finally, the overall microscopic inspection on the new aerospace assembly line. When each solder point and each tracing, component installation and alignment is quality controlled and checked down to the microscopic level - not only are the amplifiers built at a high quality level, they are each almost exact clones of one another. With this kind of quality in construction and that thicker redundant (double, one on each side of the board) pure copper tracings everything sounds thicker, richer, cleaner and more... just real. So, as good as the older Raven Audio amplifiers are, and they are extremely good! The new MK3's are indeed better sounding, better quality, and we increased the thickness of the chassis too! So everything has a blacker background and richer sonics. I am probably one of only a few that can directly compare the first generation Avian Series amps (which was only the original Nighthawk which didn't even have a powered volume) to the second and third generation when the Blackhawk LE and Ospreys were born - to the MK3's. There is quite a difference. The best descriptive words I can come up with - are "richer" "thicker and punchier" and even more accurate. We can measure that too. What happens when you can control the construction at this level is just astounding. I still pull that old 1st generation Nighthawk out just for fun on some Sundays... it takes a while but it still proves to be just loads of "fun" but I can hear the difference. The new amps are so much cleaner too. Micro detail really stands out and there is more separation on complicated music, especially classical and movie soundtracks. I'm not sure we will ever beat these new amps. Ever.
The Osprey has a pair of stereo sub output for the (very nice) cross-over feature. How do you connect those to a sub that only has a single low-level RCA input (like a REL T5i)? I am wondering if you could use a Y-splitter to convert the stereo sub output to a single, mono sub output without shorting or causing damage to the sub out of the Osprey.
Can anyone that’s gone from a Blackhawk MK3 to the Osprey MK3 describe the sonic differences between them. Thanks
I had a nighthawk then blackhawk and also listened to the osprey quite a bit. small jump in sound quality from nighthawk to blackhawk, bigger jump from blackhawk to osprey. the osprey has by far has the sweetest most mesmerizing sound.
Probably a tough question but any idea how the Osprey would compare so my Cary SLI-80? Do you think the Osprey would pair well with the SHL5 XD?
Picked up a an Osprey 3 tonight. Currently running them with the default tube configuration of 1988 Philips 12AT7WC in rows 1 and 2 and RCA cleartops in row 3 and 7581A power tubes. Trying to read up on 12AT7 tube family as its a new tube to me. It sounds good but it ain't there yet. Amp can power my SHL5's and my Forte IV's just fine. Looking for a little more soundstage width and sweeter midrange. Any tube recommendations?
congrats! and unfortunately the osprey when i heard it and owned a blackhawk the magic relied on NOS tubes. the biggies were the Svetlana winged C power tubes. they are pretty much not available any more. you can still get there with small signal tubes. beg, borrow or steal 2 amperex holland 12AT7 for the middle preamp row, game changers. i had the philips too and they sucked no offense. for the front row use sylvania jan spec 12AT7. back row use RCA 6201. the other RCAs also sucked.
If the unit is new why not give it more time to 'burn in'- would love to hear one these amps one day.
Its not new. Used from 2019. It also has a hum in the right channel. Sounds like the output transformer is noisy too. More than the typical hum from a properly working tube amp. I tried swapping the power tubes from right channel to left channel and the buzz is still in the right channel.
Ok thank you. I'm currently researching 12AT7 tubes and looking to upgrade. I've noticed the biggest changes with preamp tubes so I'm thinking start with the front 2 rows. Hopefully it's the tubes because it's quite a distance behind the Cary amp right now, but I have the Cary amp all set up with tubes I like so it's not really a fair comparison at the moment. The 12AT7 family is overwhelming. Tons of options. Some quite pricy.
the amperex are worth their weight in gold. bigger sound stage, instantly noticeable more open and dynamic sound, sweeter tone, high refinement. rca and sylvania were reasonably priced.
Almost bought one but decided on the McIntosh MA 252 instead. So far it's been perfect. Hope you get it all sorted to your satisfaction.
