It's a small sample, but Sunday I was in the mood for Deep Purple, and used that to try out, for the first time, the new set up with my VPI going directly to the C2300 with the Black Diamond tubes in the phono stage. Unlike those in the line stage, these were unused. But it's been so long since the line stage tubes were in there, maybe they need break-in again?
First,
Burn, from the album of the same name. This is a high-energy track; even more so, if you've ever seen the California Jam version. In fact, why not see it here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MLg...=RD8MLgxhqWLHo
It's not the best recording, not that dynamic, and I'm thinking I need to crank the volume a bit more to compensate. But what it sounded like was a bit cleaner sound compared to my previous setup (the Aragon 47k phono preamp and JJ ECC803s Gold Pin tubes in the 2300's line section). Then
Machine Head, a better recording with improved dynamics. Much better. Again, clean and more open than before. I enjoyed it!
Smoke on the Water was its usual bad self, and
Lazy was notable as well.
A striking (to me) feature of all this, including the classical and jazz CDs played prior to the LPs, is that instruments are sounding more like themselves. Sound overall is more open; this could be due to the Black Diamonds being less warm than the JJs before them, I guess, but there's decay I don't remember hearing; cymbals and vibes on the Modern Jazz Quartet box set from Mosaic sounded quite authentic, and I like it. The one hint of potential difficulty was when I played one of my go-to CDs
For God and Country, which is a organ/brass/percussion rendition of various Christian hymns. On some of those the brass bit pretty hard, giving an indication that bright recordings will be a challenge; that was the reason I went back to the JJs before. We'll see how that goes when I get around to brighter recordings. For now, the BDs will stay. Overall, I get an improved sense of musicians playing together.