Pathos acoustics TT anniversary amplifier is one of the best amplifiers made the recent years. From day one coming out of the box gave me jaw dropping performance with its transperacy ,hi definition on every note and the excellent deep bass.I have a mcintosh system , with 2 huge amps 1200 watts each ,tube preamp 2200,and a tunner R85, speakers the verry fine infinity IRS gamma, close to the $ 30,000.00 retail all together. Pathos did equal performance or perhaps a better job from the mac's ,using infinity kappa 7.1. Soon i am buying focal electra 1028 BE to replace the kappa's, the only thing is you have to be carefull with the speakers to be easy load driven and the impentance no less than 4 or 5 ohms. i am srongly reccommend to anyone this Pathos amp from Italy.
The Pathos TT (Twin Towers) stands right up there with any of the wonderful amps I have heard over the past two years. It pairs very nicely with Devore Nines which I spent hours listening to before making my speaker choice. In my home it is driving Audio Note AN-e LX HE high effidiency speakers. I arranged a side by side comparison of the Pathos TT with an Audio Note M6 Preamp and the Audio Note P4 Balanced mono blocks. That is over $30,000 worth of AN gear. It stood its ground with sweet extended highs and colorful extended transparent lows. It fell short in the mid range but not by much. The paralllel 300b's in the P4 had an amazing palpable mid. But we're talking $$$$$. and I paid $2000 used for the Pathos.
In my home the sonic presentation is most satifying. It is not the fastest amp. Shindo gear has a better pacing, but I like the sonic presentation as well as if not a bit better than Shindo. Love this integrated amp! Simple, no expesive interconnects to deal with.
My acquaintance with Pathos TT amplifier started while visiting a well-respected hi-fi dealer shop some time ago. I was struck by its exterior beauty and as I came to find out later, its beauty was not at all skin deep.
I spent some three years with this amplifier and I would like to share my time and experiences with those who consider a purchase.
This is a fairly large and VERY HEAVY amplifier. It is delivered in a reinforced wooden box and maneuvering it into position takes more than one person. So do not attempt to move it single handedly.
Unfortunately there is not anything remotely resembling a handle on the unit's enclosure to facilitate moving so you need to use creativity on how to take the unit out and hopefully position it into place.
Once sucseeded, you will be visually rewarded by what might possibly be one of the most beautifully sculpted pieces of audio engineering available. The tasteful combination of colors and polished metalworks create a highly unusual but stunningly beautiful enclosure. However, upon closer inspection one notices small flaws and misalignments that make the unit more resemble a high quality diy effort than that of a high end commercial offering.
If not properly informed, one might think of Pathos TT as an all tube design. The enclosure certainly borrows the open architecture one is accustomed to from tube designs, and the three large transformers on the back remind us of the output transformers of the past. However, Pathos TT is a Hybrid: using tubes for the preamplifier stage, and class A solid state stage for its output stage.
The class A operation of the output stage makes this amplifier hot -- no let me rephrase that -- it makes this amp so freakishly HHHHOT that I was always concerned about its well being. The heat sinks and the three transformers in particular got unpleasently hot.
Since I owned some class A amplifiers before Pathos TT, and was very familiar with their heat producing mechanism, I could not help but wonder if the Pathos TT electronics was under-built.
Sonically, this was an interesting unit. Right out of the box and cold, the amp sounded ok: fairly dimensional, good midrange and somewhat limited or rolled-off highs. However as the amplifier got hot and hot and hotter (after 7 - 8 hours), its sonic character changed very very dramatically. The midrange aquired a plasticity and sweetness that was second to none. The bass response became extremely articulated and somewhat forward (noticable). The highs got sweeter and much more natural, but still remained slightly rolled off.
Pathos TT shared some of the sonic charactereristics of the well executed SETs on the marked, but coupled with an unfamiliar extension at the frequency extremes that was pleasently surprising.
There are some practical issues to consider however:
The gain of the amplfiier is way too high, making it very difficult to properly operate the volume control past 8 o'clock with reference high voltage sources like Wadia's and excellent phono's like the Steelhead.
The noise is too high. On quiet passages the tube-noise & flicker artifacts are clearly audible, making it less suitable for high sensitivity speakers.
The output stage of Pathos TT is unusually and sadly -- capacitively coupled !!! I dont know how far backwards in time one must travel to encounter capacitively-coupled solid state output stages!! For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology -- it means that there is a large capacitor, necessarily electrolytic, in the worst place of all: in series with the speaker !!!
A very unfortunate decision by the designer and a big thumbs down for Pathos. However all of the other offerings from Pathos Acoustics feature direct coupled solid-state output stages so thankfully the designers have taken the critisism to heart.
Because of this capacitive coupling, there is a loud POP every time the amp is turned on or off, launching the woofers into your face!!
It is a Single Ended design, meaning the output stage is unable to sink current beyond its static bias amplitude, limiting the amplifier's driving capabilities to speakers with a min of 6 ohms nominal impedance.
Regardless, I purchased the unit and started my journey into the hi fi universe, and it looked very promising through the eyes of the Pathos TT, however this is when problems started:
Unfortunately the unit broke after 4 months, and shipping it back and forth to the dealer was a pain in the you know what. My first unit was sent back for repairs 4 times and then replaced by a brand new unit.
The new unit did not sound at all like the first one. It sounded very congested and shut in. The low frequencies were almost too forward, inflated and boomy. The highs were rough and very grainy.
Once I inspected the unit closer, I noticed the use of different tubes and transistors. This was quite surprising, and I could not achieve the sound quality of the first unit regardless of what I did or how many hours I played on it.
The second unit broke after 8 months and was sent back for repair 2 times. After the third time it was once again replaced by a brand new unit.
Unfortunately the third unit sounded even worse than the second. It was equipped with the SOVTEK tubes famous for their lack of detail. I started tube rolling with no positive outcome.
Although the last unit did not break, I was seriously disappointed by the sound-quality variation of the different units produced, and the fact that I was unable to obtain what I once heared through the very first unit in my possession.
My journey with Pathos TT ended a while ago as I grew tired of all the trouble of having an unreliable product.
Before I returned the last unit I made sure to compare it with other similarly priced amps.
I was completely blown away by a very underestimated little class A amp called the Pass Aleph 3. It possessed all the naturalness and midrange liquidity of the pathos TT combined with a sweet and very extended top end, along with a rock solid bottom end. On a side by side comparison with the last Pathos TT unit, the Aleph scored on every note.
Strengths: Beautiful superb build quality. The most natural sound I have heard from an amplifier.
Weaknesses: None
Bottom Line:
This amplifier is very smooth and dynamic. The small details that I did not hear before are now there but in coherent and natural way. Imaging, soundstage, and depth of field are perfect. On all kind of music, jazz, classic, rock the detail of bass and highs are extraordinary, mids are to die for. This is world class amplifier one of the best, period.
This is review of Pathos T.T. Anniversary. In my 30 years of audio hobby Pathos T.T. Anniversary is the best amplifier I have ever heard. I have tried at home several times more expensive amplifiers than T.T. but nothing comes close when it comes to detail, coherence, soundstage, transparency etc. T.T. was tried with several speakers with difficult load but amplifier drove all of them with aplomb. This is pure class A single-ended design with tubes as input and MOSFET as output. Pathos T.T. Anniversary creates dimensionality and openness with soloists and orchestral sections like nothing I have heard before and I have owned amplifiers several times more expensive than T.T. It extracts bass, midbass, midrange ant treble extension and clarity from the system and by doing this increases the scale of the soundstage as nothing I have heard before.
