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In his RMAF the Federated Mike post some comments about his use of ML3:

http://www.audiofederation.com/hifiing/2008/RMAF2008/report/1500/floor_9/#audio_federation

Even though his comments from my point of view have “issuers” but Mike’s comments still are way more natural then the asphyxiated crap that paid “industry reviewer” have written about ML3. Here are the Federated Mike's comments that related to Lamm’s new SET. The rest of the comments you might red at the Federated Blog:

The Lamm ML3 amps preformed spectacularly. Much more macro dynamics than at home. Likely due to HRS under Marten crossover and solidity of floor.

The ML3 is the pinnacle of the audiophile amplifier. It does all those audiophile things. Unlikely to be challenged for a decade or more. Solid-state approaches the ideal but controlling the note waveform well-enough to imitate music is not/may not ever be on the agenda. Audio Note is taking a different approach altogether [energy transfer] focusing on musicality, happy to sacrifice uber resolution and imaging when necessary. WAVAC is going for something, unknown, but unfortunately not harmonics and correct decay. Kondo, in my opinion, was going for spiritual essence. Who else is there?

About average equipment, one describes what they do well.

About excellent equipment one describes what they do not do well.

But the Lamm ML3 doesn't really do anything unexcellent. I can contrast and compare to the Audio Note Kegon Balanced and Ongaku... but, really, for the audiophile who is searching for that sound - that instantiation of everything audiophiles have been striving for in the last few decades - this is it. The exact, expected amount of harmonics [between Joule and WAVAC. OK, everybody is between Joule and WAVAC, But...], superb linearity [linearity in the harmonic content, micro- midi- and macro-dynamics up and down the frequency spectrum], resolution that has not been seen in an amplifier before, control of the microforms of each note never before seen in an amplifier, ... More later. And we were just starting to learn about this amp. Great amps take years to understand.

What will probably shock :-) the Lamms, who play Jazz and mostly Classical music, is that these amps... or at least this system with the ML3s, love Hendrix-style guitar. We talked about how these sounded great on Stevie Ray Vaughan's Tin Pan Alley. How it captured the slow guitar picks with such exquisite care that we just felt honored to be able to finally experience Stevie's talent in our living room. For all these years, I never knew how good he was. Sure, we heard the LP many times. But to hear how he was laying the pick across the strings, and how he was moving the strings around to get the exact sound - and to HEAR the exact sound he was going for....

And at the show, someone brought in a copy of the Woodstock LP, they gave it to Neli and I was out of the room at the beginning - but during the song, and into the Star Spangled Banner - it was just so colorful and rich and each layer of sound was rendered so accurately and firmly. Jimi's rendition never sounded so damned excruciatingly BEAUTIFUL before. Yeah, it is was and still is an in-your-face we-are-here noisy shout of rebellion from the youth to the old stodgy class who always seem to be trying to stop everyone from having fun, no matter which decade it is. But there seemed to be a lot more there, that the ML3 was able to extract how much effort Jimi put in, how much love and anguish and anger and caring about America he put into each of his notes. Perhaps I was reading too much into his technique - but this was really intense.

Neli tells me that she has had similar experiences with solo violin and operettas. That the ML3's capture the riveting nature of a soloist - just like a live performance. [Neli: It's not like the complexity of the orchestral background is lost -- in fact, there is a real sense, say, of individual violins in the string section -- but the listener's attention is drawn to the beauty and power of the soloists performance -- just like what happens IMO at a live show. At each level everything is rendered in perfect proportion.].

Thinking about it now - it is apparent that the system itself, even this system, in support of the Lamms, was a limiting factor.  For example, we used a 10 meter run of Valhalla, which, although sounding better at longer lengths, still should be ODIN. Well, not should be, but it would sure be nice. Another example: Nordost was kind enough to lend us a ODIN power cord, but how we wished for a PAIR; we would have put them on the ML3s. Another example: The ML3s were all on HRS M3 bases, which are the best vibration isolation available today. But the M3s were on the carpet, and putting the M3 on SXR amp stands would add another little extra boost in performance, The point is that with these amps, the system can evolve and continue to be upgraded for a very long time and you will just hear more and more of what the amps can REALLY do.

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