Thanks to everyone for coming over. I really enjoyed it.
A sharpness in the treble of the speakers was pointed out to me, we experimented to try to figure the cause, likely the rising impedance of the woofer, or breakup from too much power too high frequency. I thought the crossover freq was 5.3kHz, but it is actually crossed at 7.2kHz, 1st order. Today Sol and I will experiment a bit to figure it out. At low volumes it's not a problem which leads me to believe it's cone breakup, not impedance which would still be audible at any volume. With high resolution music files it was still there but less annoying. Coincident crosses similar driver at 4kHz, 1st order without zobel so maybe I'll try moving the freq down.
The combination of Shane's high res files through BuffaloDAC and i60 was phenomenal in the Katana's ceramic drivers. The smoothness and detail of high res is just awesome.
The moscode and butler 2250 amps also joined in, both sounded great. The moscode was very smooth and "musical." I craved more bite with the RCA tubes (never my favs), and Shane brought more tubes but we didn't have time to do that, but overall it sounded very inviting. The butler had more bite (midrange texture), and also smoother treble than I remember from previous audition. Nice amp. Surprisingly to me, Sol's 60watter had the best bass control and more detail than any of the other amps. Final configuration was the Ref3 > i60. We had a great laugh when Steve said, all you need is a ref3 front end in the amp.
We started off with tubes. Raysonic 168 > ARC Ref3 > Manley 300B. No bass. We never did figure out why. Switching to ARC VT-100mk3 made good bass so we stuck with that. The treble forwardness was evident in the beginning as people were talking nearby so the volume was higher. Thanks for pointing it out to me guys. I never listen that loud, but I would like too.
My room really needs midrange absorbtion. I don't really hear it sitting on the couch, but standing up behind the couch it is very apparent. Next time, for sure.
Rich