One last thought, about the LTA, the fact that they’re 20 watts, allows for more wiggle room, instead of having to get things exactly right with a low watt amp of 2~6 watts. At this point, I just want something that’s good, not chasing perfection, just chasing a point where I’m personally content and not have to think about the “next” upgrade.
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Woo hoo!! That is one amazing chain you’ve just put together!!
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Joined the microZOTL gang. So far enjoying it a ton w/ Nighthawk OG. 
Long term plan for the MZ2 is a 2ch setup.
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Nice nice, will be curious of your thoughts when you get more time with it 
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You guys think a MZ2 could drive klipsch rp600m? They are efficient but not super efficient.
The more I look into the MZ2 the more I want one (for headphones) but it would be nice if it could also drive my speakers, I like to listen loud (80db aprox) but I could do a near field setup.
@NickMimi has tried the combination with an MZ2, I’m sure he’ll chime in.
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My guess is in a small space they will get loud, but probably it won’t be the best experience.
Underpowered speakers, tend to lose Bass authority, and sometimes can sound bright.
1W is really very little for speakers, I’m not sure I’d buy one with speakers as a primary use case.
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I agree, would probably work well enough for near field though.
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Doesnt sound promising at all, even with 35wpc funk Ive maxed out the pot without going deaf (not near the speakers tho)
Also I care a more about the dynamics than volume when nearfield, ive read less power less dynamics in these type of scenario
Will nickmimi to save the day?
@MacDLaw Pm sent let’s try something out…
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Ok, so I recently ran into an article that called a smaller room set-up between 7 - 12 ft (triangle) Mid-field with anything less “near-field” and anything beyond 12ft “far-field”, fair enough. This means I have 1 set up of each distance / style in a dedicated listening room in my home so I can try different combinations with minimal effort.
I promptly set up an MZ3 in my “mid-field” room to play w/ it and get initial impressions.
Yes, with sensitive speakers even less than a full 1 watt of output is very satisfactory but you had better have a quiet and treated/damped room along with high sensitivity speakers and a good sub to fill out the bottom end.
I am using a “decent/fair” front end. Laptop> ROON> Matrix audio X-SPDIF2 DDC> Line Magnetic 32 DAC> MZ3> 84’ Klipsch Heresy / REL T/7i sub w/ mix of upgraded cables
I have tried a variety of genres and the MZ3 / Heresy combo does not lack noticeably in any area compared to amplifiers with higher wattage.
To prove a point to myself I did try Polk LSIM 703’s (88db) and as expected that speaker ran the amplifier out of steam promptly and cannot be used with such a low power amp.
I have a few more speakers to try, but the Heresy due to it’s particular nature and build may probably be one of the few speakers that actually performs well on this amplifier. The woofer is crossed over at about 55hz and it really is a very efficient build. The room is very quiet, and small at 12 x 13 x 8 along with damping material and a plush rug throughout. The sub is easy to blend in this system and I tapped the speaker taps directly to power it.
I can direct A/B comparison w/ other amplifiers and the this set-up would be very satisfying and easy to enjoy long term if funds were tight and an all in one was needed. I will freely admit the unit is a damned fine pre-amplifier and as such I very much enjoyed it in that role for a few hours too. I’m looking forward to eventually trying it with and next to my incoming Decware 2 watt amplifier to see what the differences are.
That’s all for now, just not enough hours in the day to experiment with all the possible combinations available to me, I will do my best to jot down impressions when I can for posterity. 
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I got curious tonight as well and decide to hook up the MZ2 to my only speakers at the moment… Emotiva T1 (4ohm, 88db, 3-way w/ 32mm folded ribbon, 5.25″ mid, (2) 6″ woofers) and at 12 o’clock is was plenty loud for me. db meter on my phone was around 65-70db. It helps that my HT room (basement) is isolated and very quiet. They sounded good to me and gave me an idea how well the MZ2 will do on higher sensitivity speakers.
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Heres in short what I got from your reply:
1 Get an mz2
2 figure the best setup possible for the room
3 enjoy the ride
Even if the speaker synergy isnt the best im still left with an amazing tube pre amp and very good matchups with my headphones
Grats on the decware matee
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Nice, maybe a tekton mini lore could be a good affordable match if I do get it
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The LTA site recommends 95 db or higher sensitivity speakers so you’re good there. The rp600m is an 8 ohm speaker so you won’t get the full watt but the MZ2 doesn’t drop to half a watt until 14 ohms.
I think you’d be fine in a near field system with 96 db speakers (I can’t speak to how the rp600m perform in a near field system). It has a pre out so you can add a sub without putting further stress on the amp as well.
@ericg stoked to hear about your foray into 2 channel! I know you’re on the hunt for more suitable speakers but glad to hear you’re enjoying what you have for now. Good luck in your search!
Really surprising how well controlled everything is with the lowest power imaginable. Heresy’s are so easy to live with.
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My LTA integrated ships out tomorrow… I’m like a giddy schoolgirl.
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Nearly 2 am and I’m sitting here going… one more song… one more song. Not sure what the most appropriate audiophile term for it is, control? coherency? instrument separation? all of the above? but the LTA ZOTL Ultralinear + has an ability to play super complex passages of music, the parts were there’s a ton of things going on all over the audio spectrum and still I can pick out individual instruments, melodies or sound effects. I’m sure the DAC is having some say in this, but man I’m enjoying this amp.
What I’m enjoying most is the ability to hear minute details in parts of the music that are much lower in volume than the main body of the passage is playing loudly.
… and this is just with a plain ol’ HD600!
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Some commentary here on the UL + as I’ve had it now long enough to feel confidence speaking with more complete feelings about what it is and what it isn’t.
Firstly, the limitation of not having experience in the stratosphere level of HP amps prohibits me from saying if this is better or worse than amp X. So I’ll limit my commentary on how strikingly different the listening experience on this has been than my previous amps.
O2, xDuoo T-20, BasX A-100, MLP, BHC/SB, Burson Conductor, Tuba, Aural Auditions. That’s it, my entire history with amps, be they SS, tube, portable whatever. The reason I list them (chronologically) is to maybe give you guy s a reference as to where I’m coming from and comparing the LTA to.
Originally deciding on purchasing an MZ3 and a day or two after that purchase deciding on ditching it and just ordering the Int UL+ in it’s place. It just made more sense from a quality of life standpoint, freeing up living space by going with an integrated unit. It wasn’t an easy decision at it is nearly twice the cost of an MZ3 but it just made more sense being able to consolidate a HP amp and a legitimate integrated amplifier I could use with a wider variety of speakers, as low a 88db sensitivity. Or in my case go with a high sensitivity set of speakers and gain a broader usable volume range since apartment dwelling is going to force lower volume listening after hours.
That said, let me get right to the sound. I always associated lean to mean dry. I associated analytical with lack of musicality, I associated tubes with a warm bloom. I’m sure you can point to the amps in my history that led me to those associations. But that isn’t the case, and on the contrary, far from an absolute in the way to describe sound.
You can have lean but with a muscular authority and control, the lean can also mean that unencumbered. I can’t help to think of the legs of TDF rider as an analogy. Lean but look again.
I won’t speak to the technicalities of the LTA design, suffice to say they use non standard TV tubes for audio use, and despite the manufacturer saying they feed those tubes only about 25% of their rated power they still get hot to the point where you can’t keep your hand on top of the chassis for longer than a few seconds. The sucker is consuming a lot of current for the 20 watts it makes.
This is by far the most organic sounding amp I’ve ever heard. Instead of the lush warm bloom in the power of a MLP or the Burson Conductor, it has an immediate raw power that starts and stops with the control that you’d hear in a servo controlled sub. There’s a punch to the bass in the 80 to 120mhz range that is just instant without needing time to build up and that slam is for lack of a better word, gloriously intoxicating. It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before, so the question is what was the real sound to begin with? The answer to this question is me coming to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter, as long as you like the sound who cares which one is more accurate.
I will say that now the definition of lean to me, means uncluttered with a more natural timbre that’s only obvious once you hear it. Your brain goes… ahh, yeah, that sounds a lot more like a kick drum than I’ve ever heard, but yet it sounds a little foreign since I’ve never heard it like this before. Am I even making sense?
Suffice to say, this amp is very detailed, very good black background, VERY quick and there’s a control of the sound that is immediately noticeable. I recall thinking to myself… now I know what control means. Like Neo realizing he now knew Kung-Fu. You just know.
When I spoke to the guys at LTA they said that all of their headphone outputs sound different because they sound like the amp they’re in. So the MZ3 is different than the Z40 and the Z10 and the UL+. That the sound of the headphone output will sound like the speaker output so I can’t make any generalizations as I can only base my experience on the UL+.
I will say one last thing, I now do not feel guilty about selling my Eikons as the VC connected to this amp has presented me with a sublime listening experience and has enabled the Eikon slam to the VC wile still showing me detail in music that I hadn’t even considered previously. I can now see how close the singer’s mouth is to the microphone as the recording was taking place and I can see when the singer leans in or steps back in various passages.
Yeah, I can’t imagine how much better it gets, but I have to get off the the escalator at some point and I really feel comfortable saying that I’ve reached my floor.
I will perhaps add an update here once I get speakers and can see what this thing does out of the speaker posts instead of the headphone out. lol Four or five more weeks of waiting is what Louis told me.
1 to 5, five being best.
Tonality (timbre) 5
Sub Bass 5
Mid Bass 5
Mid Range 4.5 (with the VC in the chain, it’s a 5 but I’ve enjoyed the mid range of the BHC/SB more)
High End 5 (know that my hearing seriously rolls off after 11k)
Imaging (TBD)
Instrument Separation 5
Attack 5
Decay 5
Stage Width TBD
Stage Depth TBD
Stage Height TBD
Once I get speakers I’ll come back and talk about the staging (leaving these TBD since I feel these speak more about the HP than not at this point)
Background 4.5
This is my first real “review” of something since I’m feeling comfortable enough to talk about it with valid assertions. Also understand that I am feeding this from my Weiss DAC (which goes a LONG way) and I have done as much as I can within reason to keep noise and crap from the system. Connecting the EtherREGEN and fiber optic cable was noticeable BTW, which made my ability to hear the music that much better so keep that in mind. Ask question if you want me to clarify or dive deeper into something.
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Thats it! Back to the drawing board!
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I actually love this in music. When you hear the singer rocking in and out from the mic. It gives quite a human touch and energy to things.
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