Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Super t-amp and M3ti

I just wanted to firstly thank you guys on this board for steering me in the right direction as I made my first steps into the audiophile world. I'm now listening to Queen's Greatest Hits on my new Super T-Amp and M3ti speakers and am enjoying the experience immensely. The setup is run from my computer where I've now started to ditch all my mp3s in favor of Exact Audio Copy ripped cds to Apple lossless. Especially noticeable with well mastered cds like the aforementioned Queen.

Having given my preamble about being new to the audiophile world I figured I'd give some basic impressions on the super t m3ti combo. Firstly, if you are worried about bass and/ or general volume worry no more. Perhaps in a large room this might be a different story, but in a bedroom sized room this combo will play loud enough to annoy neighbors.

I did some minor A/B comparisons with my existing gear and was quite happy. I'm not used to listening comparisons, but the Super t brought out more detail while being warmer sounding with greater bass extension when compared with my Sony STR-DE835 receiver. I then compared the m3ti's with my polk rti6's on the super t. This was a little harder because I was very much used to the polks which are quite bassy and thus the m3ti's seemed a little anemic at first. I'm now thinking that along with greater resolution of detail the m3ti's are probably simply more accurate. Quite different speakers in any case, and I'm still happy with my polks in my surround setup.

Whew. I'll stop there for now but if anyone has any questions let me know. I'd be happy to give back to the forum. I was also wondering if anyone has a similar type setup with an external DAC. That's what I'm looking at next (perhaps the firestone spitfire) and was wondering if this would give a measurable improvement in sound? I'm working off of a m-audio revolution board right now and am obviously looking to build a bang for the buck type system. Hope this is useful to someone and I'm glad to have joined the axiom community.

Wow, and yet Another positive referal to the T-Amp with M3s!!

I had been wanting to go with tubes with my M3s for my diningroom listening area, but the expense of tubes may Not be the way to go!!

Thanks for the input, very usefull information, and a hearty "Welcome to the Community"!!

I have M22's and they have mediocre bass response, definately a lacking there. They are powered by 90 watts, but a subwoofer is on its way and I have heard the M22's mix beautifully with a sub because of their flat response. I bet the M3's would be just as good with a sub. I'd recommend it. My sub is in the mail now.

P.S. Marvin, what bitrate were you encoding using exact audio copy? I recently started replacing all of my 225 VBR music (encoded with iTunes) with 320kb/s Exact Audio Copy encoded mp3 files. The iTunes mp3 encoder is horrible in quality compared to other mp3 encoders, their mp4 encoder is one of the best though.

Anyways, in reference to the bitrate you were using, how much difference do you notice with lossless?

My computer is at college and I can't really test things out like that now.

Also, make sure you are using digital output from your computer, you will see a huge difference in quality from analog. If you were using analog, switching to digital might make your mp3's sound a load better.

Sorry if my sentence was unclear dan, but the EAC rips are the apple lossless. EAC rips using itunesencode to create the apple lossless. The bitrates of my mp3s vary by source, but I can still hear a difference between the lossless and my 260 VBR rips (lossless rips seem slightly fuller bodied with a greater resolution of detail, take this with a grain of salt however as those rips were done with different software so any comparisons are hard to make). Thanks as well on the weigh in for digital out, as it is I am using the analog out until I can afford/settle on a DAC. Is there a DAC you are using that you'd recommend?

Does your receiver have a digital in?

I have an older soundblaster with a digital out. It's a 1/8th inch to phono connecter. 3 bucks at radio shack. Get the all gold version and bigger RCA plugs will fit it.

Then I'm just linking that to the digital in on my receiver.

Having the digital out (SPDIF) enabled on your sound card bypasses any sound processing by the sound card, and just sends a straight digital signal.

I don't know how exactly you want to use a DAC.

If you don't already have a sound card with digital out on your computer, do a search on ebay for a creative card. The quality of the card really doesn't matter because it is just sending a direct digital signal, it does no processing.

My receiver does indeed have digital in, however, it is in my living room for my multichanel setup. The super t-amp m3ti combo is connected straight to my computer and the super t has only analog inputs. My soundcard does have a digital output and so the DAC would sit in between the digital out of the soundcard and the t-amp.

Gotcha. I don't know how much of an improvement you will see with a DAC because it inevitably goes back to analog.

If you were watching movies, I would highly recommend it. Seems you are already enjoying your setup though.

Not to thread hi-jack but does anyone know of a good (inexpensive) USB 2.0 card? I just got my Nano and realized I only have 1.1 (my computer is 4yrs old). The manual recommends getting a 2.0 card if you don't already have it on your computer. I don't even know what the hell this is and you guys seem to know a lot more about computers than I do.

If it has USB 2.0 ports on it and costs less than $25, buy it. That's about it. IOGear makes one that I've used in a couple of machines. (Macs only, but it'll work in a PC.)

Thanks, I'll stop by Staples later on today.