I have moved to a fully computer based set up as a source. No transport and none of those shiny disks any more.
The system has an open, huge soundstage, with very clean, tight bass that dives deep into two figure Hz.
The sound is very powerful and dynamic. Extremely detailed, but still warm, musical and believable and easy to listen to. With the right recording a reach out and touch holographic image and soundstage is possible.
I have been through quite a lot of equipment. I am and was a huge Audio Research fan for years, and I used their tube monos/preamps with great happiness.
I have pretty much always had planar speakers until recently. So I needed powerful amps to drive Magnepan2.6R/3.6R and Apogee Diva/Duetta sig etc.
I have moved to high sensitivity speakers in the form of the Avantgarde Trios now. This has enabled a move to very low powered SET amplifiers which has been great fun.
I have been searching for equipment that keeps the music free of colour and true to the recording. I believe you choose your source for its sound. The rest of the equipment should let the source do its magic as much as possible and get out of the way of the music.
This unit is modified with Mundorf silver/gold in oil caps, Mundorf tube cap, and Duelund VSF Cu caps. I use Emission Labs mesh plates 45 power tubes. A very refined and beautifully natural sounding amp. Very transparent.
DCS Scarlatti clock
Finest player in the world
Avantgarde Trio
19 ohm 109db/watt with 225 subs
DCS Scarlatti
State of the art number crunching.
PS audio Premier Power Plant
Power regenerator.
Analysis plus Golden oval XLR
Beautiful cable. Amazing detail and still warm and life like
Audio Magic Stealth XXX oyaide
Specially made with Oyaide XXX sockets and furutech input. Much more detailed than the Hydra it replaced
Apogee Duetta signature2 Heavily modified
These have the latest Graz ribbons both tweeter/mid and bass panels. I have external cross overs with mundorf silver/gold in oil caps and Alphacore foil inductors. Caddock resistors and all solid core silver wired. All suspended and vibration free. These apogees take much more power and go way louder and have much better dynamics than the original. Not only that but much improved sound quality. Simply stunning! I have had many planars magnepan etc but these really are the best in every way now. Long live Apogee and Thank goodness for Grazs search for perfection!
Virtual dynamics Revelation 2
This must be one of the only cables I have heard that when compared to cables that seem to "do nothing" or just pass signal untouched this cable does lots but in a good way! A staggering solid detailed sound, but a nightmare to plug in due to its size, weight and stiffness.
Virtual dynamics Master LE
Very nicely focused cable with very low noise floor. The best bass I have heard and startling dynamic speed
Oyaide SWO XXX/SWO GX
Its own spur and conditioned with various filters along the way before reaching the Stealth
Acoustic Revive RR-77
Sends out a very low frequency into the room which disrupts RFI EMI and makes you feel relaxed! Very odd but works well Seems to focus the mid range
Sonic studio Amarra
Bolt on for itunes
Auralex Lenrd Bass traps
I have 8 of these traps placed subtly in the corners of the listening room. They have done a very good job in a room that had quite tight bass anyway.
Weiss Medea plus
Latest super DAC. Volume control on Firewire input. Variable output voltage to match amps. stunning DAC
I was excited to hear your comments on the Halcro. I immediately went to search out Halcro. The first thing I came up with was a review by Stereophile. What to my utter surprise did I find? The amp reviewed was the much, much less expensive Halcro 20, a class D amp.
I read it anyway. A negative comment the reviewer made about the depth rang true to lots of reviews about class D. They say the soundstage is shallow and doesn't separate a singer from his/her accompanying choir in the background.
My sound was that way too, until I fit my home made ribbon speaker cables to the task. Out popped the foreground from the background. All other aspects of the sound improved as well.
Anyway, I am very happy you love the sound of your Halcro. Obviously Bruce Candy knows his stuff.
It has taken an amp of Halcros quality to show exactly what the BC ref1000s cannot do.
As I know some of you are aware. I have been looking for some time for an amp to drive the Trio. I have tried quite a few now and each time there was always something I was missing when I removed the Ref 1000s.
But the Halcro has shown a cheapness and lack of tying up of strands that the BC suffers. Something you would probably not notice until you put them side by side.
What has surprised me is how different the Halcro sounds to the last time I had one driving my Magnepans. It is so creamy and complete. I remember it being a lot cooler presentation than this before. But on the Trio it is so beautifully natural and warm but without anything getting in the way.
It is very detailed but unlike the BC that detail is not just separation and ultra wide soundstage and amazing bass. Somehow the Halcro DM38 ties all that detail together and makes it relaxed and seemingly unimportant. It is ultra pure. All you do is put on record after record. A really great amp.
Thats not to say the BC is not great. You get a long way towards full highend performance with the BCs, but at the end of the day that last few percent of performance makes all the difference.
It isnt so much that I need help. It is just that I have never used the playlist function in Amarra before and I am surprised by the change in sound.
It is a little restrictive in a way, because you have to highlight the tracks to load into memory from itunes then press the playlist button in Amarra. Then press play. A bit long winded.
I tend to use itunes like a carousel, when I see something I feel like hearing I press play. Its very quick, but the playlist function in Amarra is a little more hassle. You can only load about 1 cd at a time as opposed to the 1000s of cd in itunes.
What I found surprising was a slight change in clarity for the better. The question is more about how that could be?
I am using an imac with plenty of memory which is only used for playing back music. It is very powerful considering all it is doing is playing AIFFs no matter how big they are!
Has anyone been using the the "memory player" function called playlist in Amarra?
I only used it for the first time yesterday. I tend to just control my listening through itunes using Amarra but a friend of mine urged my to try the playlist function.
I was surprised to hear a noted improvement in clarity and focus.
I had a spare mains filter gathering dust (audio magic) so I thought for the hell of it I would plug my computer into it.
I was surprised to find the sound of the system improved by a small but fair margin. The computer is on a different spur to the system anyway so it has nothing to do with the computer adding noise to the system itself that way.
I wondered if anyone else has tried conditioning on a computer which is used as a source?
the joys of the 2010. Unfortunately it is the music that is seen to be cheap as well now. Almost free most of the time. An industry that is in trouble at the moment, with film to follow...
Disk files are just better source for digital audio systems I believe. And I agree optical drives/transports designed exclusive for audio are a dying breed. I hardley ever use mine anymore. I rip to music server disk first and play from there.
Once ripped to hard disk storage, any connection, firewire, network or other with sufficient bandwidth to get the bits to the audio components involved in the d to A conversion (clock, DAC)will suffice in that it is just data being delivered. Conversion to sound occurs afterwards.
BTW, I just bought a 1.5 Tb USB disk drive at Best Buy for $140 US. My entire CD collection and more will fit on that. That is incredible!
HI Mapman, I have an older DCS transport. Not the new Scarlatti transport. Personally I think transports are over for all sorts of reasons. If not for sonics then convenience.
SACD is the only reason to have a transport now IMHO.
I cannot get the same solidity out of CD. I guess you could go on about the firewire cable from the Transport to the DAC (The transport upsamples to DSD and outputs via firewire) . But then again I have a really rubbish firewire cable from the computer to the Weiss. It sounds fantastic.
I can only say the transport has a kind of shimmer or something. I cannot put my finger on it. It sounds nice, but the file is more "there" or solid somehow. Maybe the transport has a little more haze. The file is so silent it is erie.
I have noticed some small things that I felt could be better. We are talking very small but I feel important details. For a while I was using the optical output from the computer as the computer was a distance from the system itself.
It sounded very good on optical (wire world supernova 6 optical cable). If I had to buy a digital cable of that length, that was as good, it would have cost a fortune. In the end I needed to play higher bandwidth than the optical would allow. So hence the Weiss.
I had some traps from the studio lying around so I thought I would give them ago.
My room has some correction and sound proofing anyway. With my Apogees too much room correction via bass traps and diffusers sucked some life out of them.
Getting the balance right gave the Apogees an ability to show depth much clearer and they became less defuse and imagery more solid.
The Trio is different. It just does that. Correction seemed to make things cleaner down below and into the midband. Avantgarde have soundstage depth to spare compared to my Apogee. But now something sounded a bit ragged in the system. Of course it sounded great over all, but I knew something was letting things down a little.
I was wondering if this was the end of the road for my amps. What else could it be? It certainly wasnt the DCS. Was this the sound people were saying ice power has that I had suddenly woken up to? I need not have worried. The Weiss sorted this raggedness out straight away.
The sweetest, natural, and velvety sound emerged. Now I dont know if this is about Amarra, Weiss, bit perfect,low jitter or what? But it sounds very good. Very "Analogue".
Each recording sounds like the time it was recorded in. ECMs, Motown, Miles Davis (you got to hear "in a silent way"!),Kraftwerk, Radiohead, and so on. All in their own era. Like having a time machine. Amazing really. A testament to what can be found on some recordings.
To think I was this close to buying tube amps again.
It is impossible to know what you are listening to, Chad. I sure do wonder. I like how you are tinkering with room adjustments. I can't do that, and when the music is loud, I find it clearer on close field listening.
System edited: I am now using the Weiss int202 firewire interface with Amarra for itunes on a mac. This has added a more solid and silky 3D presentation while being very very clean. Even though things were very clean before, a notice able lift in purity. The DCS loves it. The high frequencies are very sweet, while the upper midband had gained some weight and definition which gives an added sense of soundstage depth.
System edited: Just added a little more room correction in the shape of the Auralex bass traps. I have 8 well hidden in the room now. The room was quite tight in the bass department, and I liked the sound in there before, but after adding these additional traps I have noticed a marked improvement in bass quality.
Hi Muralman1, To answer your question the Trios are sublime.
There is no fatigue at all. Quite the opposite. The only bad side effect is I now find it very difficult to listen to other speakers. Even very good ones. Everything else sounds distant, flat, compressed and vague by comparison. I think these are my final speakers. At last! They just get to the heart of things.
I have said a few times in these pages that I am struck by how well my BCs work with the Trios. I cannot explain it.
Low level listening is no problem. The volume control on the DCS has very small (1/2 db) intervals plus switchable output voltage. The amp never betrays its size. It could be a 5 watter.
Late night secret listening is fine, as are thundering head banging concert levels. I cannot fault them. It all sounds effortless. Ok so I have some mods on these ICE boards, but even so they are gentle giants, stunningly clear, precise and completely silent.
I am finding this sound hard to beat. It is the best sound I have ever had. Music comes to life in 3 dimensions. I am very happy... as are my friends.
Hi Jasonparmenter, Thank you for the recommendations. I know the Lamms well. A very nice amp. I would like to stay SS though, even though I have had some very nice listening sessions on the 2.1 and the 1.1(hybrid).
I dont know the Silicon Arts, but will have a look for them. I have been thinking about the Pass First Watts although it may be a slight pain to re terminate my ICs as I use XLRs. Not the end of the world. I would also like to try the XA30.5.
I am very close to going back to Halcro DM series though at this point, but not before trying the various contenders. Watch this space.
Hi Chadeffect I would recommend the Lamm ML2.1 SET amplifiers for your system if you decide to go back to valve amplifiers, these amplifiers are a incredible match with the Avantgarde speakers. Solid State amplifiers I would recommend would be the Pass Labs XA 30.5 or the Silicon Arts ZL 120 mono blocks. Nelson Pass also makes some wonderful First Watt amplifiers that work really well on high efficiency speakers that are well worth a look for a very afforable option. Thanks Jason.
Yo Chadeffect, so what are you thinking about the horns now? What secrets have you coaxed from them? Can you listen to them hour after hour without fatigue? Are your amps good at low level? I would surmise the Bel Cantos are working at low level of excursion.
Muralman1 you are a devil! Never say never, but I am fairly unlikely to go back to tube amps. Not only for the obvious problems but realistically I just dont have the space for them anymore.
