Quote:
Originally Posted by C220MC275
Coooool Stephen !
You have a terrific system for sure and it is always rewarding when a good fellow audiophile appreciates it.
BTW, which TT did your friend prefer ?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rafale
Stephen....well done, congratulations for the results obtained from your system,
it is an example to be followed   |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pider
Oh, and congratulations on knowing how wonderful your system is and feeling totally satisfied with it! We all know you'll play around more, but it is very good news that you are very comfortable in this particular audio skin.  |
Thanks, guys.
Pider, yes, the Macbook music server and the Squeezebox Touch were both going through the Bifrost. The Oppo was through the Oppo. Tough to beat the Oppo's DACs.
Jerome, Rob liked all the turntables, the mono Grado, the Sumiko Pearwood and the Koetsu. I tihnk his favorite was the Koetsu, though.
When Rob called yesterday, he inquired as to the rationale behind the two turntables, and I answered that as I listen to vinyl for >95% of my listening, it's just nice to have two different cartridges/tables to listen to to mix things up a bit; my analogy was that it was like single-malt scotches; do you want Talisker or Lagavulin today?
I was kind of suprised how much Rob liked the Dynaudios as he's lived with Quads for the better part of three decades. It was like, "whatever you do, do not get rid of these speakers..." When we talked again on the phone yesterday he was most impressed with their coherence, naturalness, speed, neutrality, bass accuracy and definition, and complete lack of listener fatigue. Rob also thought they were the perfect match for my smallish listening space, and a larger or more powerful speaker would not sound as good as it would overwhelm or overpressurize the room.
Overall, I think Rob liked how similar the listening experience was to his, even though we have reasonably different implementations, but both powered by C-J tube gear. He already knew the C-J electronics would be great, but Rob also commented on how quiet the system was, and how the low noise floor from the Shunyata power cords and Hydra contributed to the naturalness and ease of listening. And that's what I've found too, the power cords and distributor impart a listening ease that you don't know you can obtain unntil you put them in the system. It's nice when you can accomplish that when your phono stage, preamp, and amp all place several tubes in the amplification chain.
I think we ended up with similar sounding systems because our requirements were pretty much exactly the same: a complete lack of listener fatgue, emphasis on naturalness and musicality of voice, timbre, tone color, and neutrality rather than the "hi-fi-y" attributes you might hear at audio shows.