Are we there yet ... well, if not it's now mighty, mighty close ... last round I mentioned bypassing the amplifier's speaker relays, and in between I did so in a quick and dirty way - the sound appeared to improve, but I was still not 100% comfortable with the overall result; I didn't feel that it was worthwhile yet to do some tests, removing the bypass and comparing that with the kludge included ... something more needed to be done ...
One thing that was always on the list was the typical rat's nest of wiring inside the amp, tying all the modules and bigger lumps of hardware together electrically. The NAD was far, far better than many in this regard - nearly all the circuitry resides on a single, large circuit board. But, the remaining discrete wiring was the usual mess one finds in audio gear, roughly and loosely tied in bundles in a couple of places - I hadn't done anything yet to improve this because the unit had been so impressive so far ... was the remaining lack of "conviction" in the sound due to this ?? In particular, low level orchestral music was not there yet ...
So, I did a round of stabilising and separating the strands of connecting wire - in simple terms, making sure that any low amplitude vibrating of wires was minimised in level and impact. Only part way through this exercise, but for now let's see what that's got us ...
Ah-hah!! Significant lift in quality, now essentially have 'invisible' speakers, the system generates a deeply immersive sound field, and conveys a convincing sense of the performers doing their thing to the far end of the house, on an aggressive, messy recording. The sense of conjuring is very strong, and perhaps only a little more tweaking will be required now for a rock solid illusion to be always on tap.
Soon I will make some further recordings, done in a more careful way, of the system's reproduction that hopefully will convey a better sense of what I'm mentioning ...
No comments:
Post a Comment