Video clips of interest ... 772

 Another capture of the dCS Varese allowing a system to do what a rig should do - have the music "just be there" ...

 

Video clips of interest ... 771

The arena is getting a bit cluttered with DACs capable of doing, good playback. As is. Another one on the block caught my eye recently, by MSB ... how well does it do? Found a recent clip of a capture of the sound,

 

 

Yep. Doing the Big Sound thing nicely, no complaints ...

Interesting Conversations Elsewhere ... 1

Actually, continuing a blog category started in Audiophilestyle.com ... forum, etc, conversations about areas of audio that I find relevant, or worth considering.

This one, https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/tweaks-cables-and-filtration-essential-for-world-class-stereo-performance.40160/ is a goody, asking whether owners of ambitious rigs have used various types of tweaks, and how important they consider them - of course, a variety of answers, from zero interest, to everything in the box, please!

The simple equation for me is, if the components are intrinsically of high enough quality, then nothing extra is required. But the reality is that audio systems are always too 'fragile' - and need all the help they can get. Irrespective of cost, some modifying and optimising of the replay chain will benefit - the end goal is fully realistic, totally immersive, holographic 3D, "suspension of disbelief" presentation; and fiddling with the type of items mentioned in that thread will achieve such for many setups, if correctly applied.

Video clips of interest ... 770

And another contender ...

 

I have zero complaints about this ... the market place is getting more interesting ...

Video clips of interest ... 769

 Okay, a very interesting one this time! Well, ta-dah ... two clips for the price of one, 😁

A high end setup, with the DAC being used swapped: first is with the Wadax unit retrieving the stream, and feeding a CH Precision to do actual conversion, and then Goldmund preamp, versus where the Wadax is doing the lot.

 

 

For me, this is easy ...both on laptop, and via our tweaked TV ... which do YOU prefer? And why?

Why did it take so long ... ?

 I smiling at the moment ... I'm now seeing a few threads on my former haunt at audiophilestyle.com along the lines of "Why does my system start sounding a bit off after some time powered up?" ... oh dear, 😉.

I spent years on this, trying to get answers. My first good system had this really, really bad ... I never fixed it at the time, and got so discouraged I completely lost interest in high quality playback. Finally, climbed back on the saddle, and tried again ... more experiences, experiments, answers ... much better place of understanding now.  

Why does it happen? Unfortunately, a number of things ... one of the easiest to understand is that the old style potentiometers used for volume control, etc, are a bit of a disaster for SQ; the way they're constructed is using poor quality surface to surface mechanical contacts, and the point where the surfaces meet deteriorate in electrical integrity over a relatively short period of time; the weak solution is to adjust the control, to refresh the contact areas - the better the setup in which they're used, the easier it is to hear the effect.

Another, more pernicious villain is static building up a charge, somewhere, which is disturbing the correct operating voltages for circuitry - they slowly move from their optimum value, to one where audible distortion becomes obvious.This is why going through a powering down, resting, and powering up again cycle always works - albeit, a very annoying 'fix' to have to rely on.

What to do about it? No easy, step by step answer - it can be a long, hard slog tracking down the cause(s). The best solution is to invest in gear which is immune to the problem; otherwise, start doing some 'debugging'  - there will be an answer, eventually ... main thing is to have the patience to keep trying ideas, so that a good solution is the end point of one's efforts ...

So, why has it taken so long for more people to start asking,"What, is going on ... ?!!" ... I don't know, perhaps part of it is that only recently have systems in general advanced enough in SQ, for this to be more obvious as an anomaly, to more people.

Video clips of interest ... 768

 Phew! ...Was wondering if I would come across a clip of the dCS Varese showing what it could do - and finally got one, 

 

Note, streaming is only at 360p, but still shows good soundstaging qualities - no, not "perfect", but plenty of boxes ticked. A top class capture would improve things ... anyway, this tells me that the Varese has the goods in raw form to enable competent playback.

Video clips of interest ... 767

 Was the previous clip of the dCS Varesse an odd one out? Okay, found another,

 

 

Oh dear ... takes me back to the old days of in your face demos, where the setup was hitting me with everything it had - might be impressive, to some ... but it ain't music - to my ears, 😉.

Video clips of interest ... 766

I was interested to hear what the dCS Varese setup being introduced was like, with all the hype about it - and this is the first video capturing a sense of the setup, performing over a range of music, that I've come across:

 

 

Hmmm ... for me, too much 'hifi' in the presentation ... also looked at it on our new TV, which does a nice job with audio ... nope! Bev said it all, with a grimace of distaste ... "That's not good!!" ... 😃

Okay, aiming high ... the slightest lapse is going to be obvious - but I would have thought that better optimising would have been done by the demo group; to 'prove' what was possible ...

I'm sure better captures will emerge ... shame this one didn't come up to what I was expecting.

Video clips of interest ... 765

 Had to put this one up ... !! 😃

Perfectly demonstrates how a well organised setup so easily projects a "You are there" experience,

Would be hard to find fault, here - 👍.

Video clips of interest ... 764

The Wadax Studio Player is showing the way towards a more reasonable (???) cost for a digital processor that doesn't mess up the SQ ... but no guarantees! The whole system has to be thoroughly debugged for it present a clean rendition of a more complex recording - and the following is an example:

 

When the going gets 'robust', at about 2/3rds of the way through, onward ... it's heavy going! It becomes a endurance test; the system in the video has issues, and having a top notch DAC, etc, in the chain is not saving it ...

Video clips of interest ... 763

 Latest audio show in Munich shows how far we've come in a few years - plenty of clips on YouTube demonstrating very good qualities in the sound able to be conjured up, with 'better' gear. This one stood out,

In particular, this points out why I laugh when people say you need a surround system to get an immersive experience ... the clip makes it obvious how the sound "fills the room", from just two, miserable speakers, 😄. This is how it works - with capable replay ...

Video clips of interest ... 762

 

 

And, on the other end, good, competent SQ ...

Can't hear a thing wrong, here.

Video clips of interest ... 761

 

Oh, dear ... the gear used ticks the boxes, but, the sound?!! An example of where just buying the right stuff doesn't guarantee a good outcome ...

Yes, some aspects are good - but I couldn't live with what this is producing, 😑.

Video clips of interest ... 760

 Recorded by a What's Best Forum owner,

So much right here ... sense of the acoustic, space, tone ...

Video clips of interest ... 759

 Just saw this clip being "reviewed" elsewhere,

 

 

Umm, no. The 'smell' of the playback chain is too severe - all I can hear are all the obvious giveaways that this is a hifi system in operation; whether it's vinyl or streaming are, for me, irrelevant - because the signature of the rest of the playback rig is too much in my face ... and I no longer care what the source is, for the examples ...

Interesting Conversations Elsewhere ... 4

 

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/visit-to-mike-lavignes-house.1196092/

 

Yes, just another thread talking of what it's like with a rig where the owner has done everything that he's comfortable with to achieve best sound ... the interesting bit for me is the comment of how vinyl compared to digital, where commensurate efforts are made:

The result is more or less same.

Yes. Accurate replay provides an almost identical view onto the captured event, between different source media ... why? Because, the 'coloration' of the mechanism used to store the data becomes invisible; your ears "hear through" the 'distortions' of the playback chain - and you connect to the event that was captured; that is what is uppermost in the experience.

 

The Purpose of Audio Reproduction - 21

 Am I in my own world, in the realm of audio reproduction? 😀 Not really ... there are plenty of people who want to be immersed in the 'reality' of the captured musical event - the difference between me and the others who explore this 'universe' is that I've gained a great deal of experience and understanding on how to make it happen; there are those who have lucked on it, as I did originally, and others by sheer persistence who have made it come to life - and who are happy to just enjoy the "fruits of their labour". I OTOH want to understand exactly the mechanisms and procedures needed to create this experience; and to communicate the type of thinking needed to approach the exercise.

This thought came about from noting this thread, https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/69441-choices, the poster is chasing "epic imaging and that 3d space i keep hearing about". The latter is of course what occurs when accurate in the right areas reproduction is achieved, completely automatically. Unfortunately, nearly all the influential people is the audio community believe strongly in alternative ideas such as "money maketh the magic", and that recordings are on the whole rather a miserable bunch that have to prodded and cajoled into generating a truly enjoyable experience. Which means the advice given on forums like that is of relatively little value - and the enthusiast is no closer to reaching his goal.

A great shame ... the vast archive of recordings is very rarely heard at anything like the standard of excellence which is possible; this impasse of not wanting to develop better understanding rears its ugly head, seemingly without end ...

Step by step surgery - 31

Again, a continuation of a thread on an audio forum, which I can no longer add to ...

This is the next chapter of what occurred during my irregular visits to who I call N., a fellow audio enthusiast up the road ...

Got a call, he's been busy with life, so not much had changed - main thing in the interim was altering the mains feed to his 'stereogram' unit, a Ruark R7. Previously, various bits of electronics which provided noise filtering were in the path, and they definitely made a difference ... but, in an attempt to reorganise the items he managed to damage a major coil, from drilling. So, this gave him the excuse to do a major comparison of various strategies ... and ended up with nothing but an 'audiophile' power cord, as best option! You know the type of thing - very blingy, thick cable, flash connectors at either end - if looks meant everything, this would be a clear winner! 😊

Well, to his ears, it happened to work best - relatively low cost, an ebay thingy - well, when I arrived, the SQ was not there. But, there were some fairly obvious experiments to try - removing all other power cords in the room, adding some electrical damping by having a simple incandescent bulb also running, in parallel; and improving the mounting of the quite heavy mains connector at the cabinet end, so that vibrations against the case were damped. Finally, the front legs which were raised up by some cork material, were sat back on the floor again.

The combination of all this moved the sound to a pretty good place. And we stayed with this for the rest of the session. The biggest, clear remaining weakness was the CD player mechanism - just like for my DVD player, an ejecting and remounting cycle, many times would change the quality from a bit mediocre to highly pleasant; at its best there was nothing I could complain about.

Second round was the main rig, in the lounge. Running this was almost a throwaway, because zero had been done to tweak it, in the interim. And, it immediately made a good impression!! A CD I brought which could be tricky, was subjectively spot on; and this "good news" continued! Disk after disk went on, and the SQ continued to tick most boxes. Most telling, some albums of the band Rainbow, who I was barely aware of, a breakaway from Deep Purple, which N. had tried earlier on the radiogram, and which weren't coherently enough presented to allow me to connect to the tracks, now made the grade!

But, it couldn't last ... the "old enemy", build up of static reared its ugly head, and an album started to sound rather sorry for itself. Resetting helped, but now the ease with the listening had been lost - persevered for a bit, but then moved to vinyl, as last round. The 'analogue' qualities stood out; simple, single instrument moments were completely in the zone - some setup tweaking helped a bit more; it ended in a satisfying full listen to Carole King's Tapestry.

So, what lessons? Both setups were capable of giving top notch sound: the Ruark had a weak spot still in being too sensitive to the CD player's operation - solutions were either to go inside and work on isolating the power supplies, etc in that area, or, bring in a better CD transport, which he had and was used in the main rig ... something for another time. The main rig showed the ability to do excellently from cold; but, was suffering from that particularly annoying gremlin of "going off the rails" after a certain period of operation. This often is very frustrating to troubleshoot, because the cause can be something "so tiny and minor" - yet hard to pinpoint.

Overall, a good round. As nearly always, not all the ducks were in a perfect row; but they showed the potential in recordings which on most systems would be dismissed as not being, umm, worthy... 😁.

Interesting Conversations Elsewhere ... 3

 

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/wadax-server-psu-unit-has-now-arrived.36722/

 

Yes, this is about an ultra high end DAC unit being 'enhanced', by getting a 'better' power supply ... to those who are disturbed by, or find it ridiculous, the fact that huge amounts of money being spent on improving already absurdly expensive audio gear, the question is, why is this interesting? Well, even though purchasing such "grotesquely" pricey stuff  is completely off the agenda for me, what it points out  that those who wish to "buy a stairway to heaven" are seemingly following a never ending road - so, again, why?

Well, it's a combination of the facts that extracting subjectively top of the line SQ from digital is a highly precarious operation, AND that the better the playback chain gets, the more you can hear the subtleties that went completely missing before, AND that even the best audio designers don't have a really good grasp on what's going on, when it still misses hitting the mark. The last part is the killer - which is why the rave model from a few years ago now no longer cuts it; it's fallen off the perch of being SOTA