With Tinka away on a business trip I took the opportunity to visit PeterA, with whom I have developed over the last three years a close friendship via WBF posts, telephone calls and emails. Peter lives in a small, seaside town about one hour north of Boston. I’ve never been to the Boston area before so this was all new to me.
This town is a beautiful New England town right on the water, with bays and marinas and boats easily visible from many locations. The town originally was a serious fishing town, and many of its inhabitants continue that cherished heritage with a love of the sea and boating and locally-caught seafood. The United States Navy can trace in its origins back to this town.
Peter and his beautiful wife, Anne, live in a charming house built in 1792, and which literally is only steps from the harbor. Peter is a member of one of the local yacht clubs, and the dock where Peter ties his shuttle boat, which he uses to reach the mooring of his sailboat, is a two minute walk from his house. For someone who loves boating and the sea Peter’s house and marina and boat set-up could not be easier or more ideal.
Peter and I have always communicated easily and, while we have always assumed that we do not have exactly the same taste in sound, we have always understood clearly where each other is coming from. I have never, personally, enjoyed the sound of Magico speakers driven by solid-state electronics (especially Soulution, Alon!), so I was assuming that I would find Peter’s system to sound bright or analytical or fatiguing in some way. Peter believed that I would not, and I wanted to believe Peter, but it just wasn’t clear to me a priori how solid-state on Magico was going to sound natural to me.
After several listening sessions over the course of a week, both with and without alcohol, I heard no trace of brightness or edginess or harshness or sterility in Peter’s system. That is your humble reporter’s considered judgment.
Peter has spent a very long time learning about the components in his system and understanding how they relate to each other in his system. Since replacing his Magico Mini IIs with Magico Q3s Peter has spent months experimenting with and fine-tuning the location if his speakers in the room and and the toe-in of the speakers. This dedication and painstaking attention to details has achieved a sound that I find very natural. I think Peter has achieved a sound from his system which justifies the system being called a reference system.
I think Peter’s system is revealing and consistent and is a stable base to which the sound of other systems can be understandably compared. I can describe the sound of Peter’s system and compare it confidently to the sound I hear from other systems. After spending a week with Peter I think I have in my head, presently anyway, an accurate understanding of what his system does and how it sounds.
One way to put it is that the sound from Peter’s system is a sound I felt very familiar with. If I closed my eyes and you told me I was listening to my prior long-term system in the smaller room of my house in which I set it up I would have thought I was listening to my system. The sound is what I was used to hearing from my own system in terms of tonality and dynamics and detail.
We played all of my test tracks multiple times. There are many little cues and moments across my various test tracks which I listen for when evaluating systems and which, in Peter’s system, sounded to me the way they used to sound in my long-time prior stereo system.
Peter’s room is not a dedicated listening room, and it is not big, but he manages to achieve real depth. On my test tracks I heard reference level (for dynamic driver loudspeakers) transparency. I heard full-deflection dynamics. I heard a natural tone. Jennifer Warnes’ voice and Thelma Houston’s voice and Jeff Buckley’s voice and Neil Young’s voice and Stevie Nicks’ voice sounded like I think they should sound on a stereo system, and how I was accustomed to hearing them sound on my prior stereo.
1) I have never heard Pass Labs amplifiers before, but, in Peter’s system, they have a warm-ish, kind of tube-ish sound. I heard no attenuation of detail or smoothing of edge transients or any absence of dynamics. I also heard no fatiguing sound or edginess or leading edge artifacts. I would say Peter’s XA-160.5s sounded like what I am used to hearing from tubes. (I assume without knowing that I am hearing slightly greater dynamics and detail retrieval and a shade dryer-sound from the Pass Labs amps than I believe I would hear from tube amplifiers.)
2) The Pass Labs equipment is beautifully machined and built. The build quality and metal machining is equal to anything I’ve seen in the high end.
3) Peter told me that the SME 30/12 turntable is considered by some people to be a little bit life-less or a little bit dead-sounding. I heard no evidence of that whatsoever.
4) My broadest conclusion of general applicability is that we spend way too much time switching components in and out of our systems hoping to achieve a certain sound without taking the time and effort to optimize each individual component in the system. I believe that Peter’s system sounds as good as it does, and shatters certain prejudices or assumptions about Magico loudspeakers and SME turntables and solid-state electronics, because he has spent a very long time sweating every detail in the system — from speaker positioning to acoustic room treatment to cartridge adjustment — and then living with it for a long time and then sweating all of those
details all over again. If we spent as much time tweaking and optimizing a particular component in our system as we spend reading about components and rapidly swapping them in and out of our systems due to dissatisfaction we might achieve a straighter-line path to sonic happiness.
It is now plausible to me that people who find Magico speakers bright or analytical have never heard them in systems which have been lovingly adjusted and tuned carefully over a long period of time.
5) The coherence of Peter’s system counts for me as a another data point in favor of employing one brand of electronics across the entire system. I would have loved to have had some tube component to swap into Peter’s system, and I have to assume that if I had substituted one of the Pass Labs components for a tube component I would have heard an increase in liquidity which I would have liked. But would I have achieved that increase in liquidity at some cost to dynamics or detail retrieval or transparency? I don’t know.
6) Peter proved to me repeatedly the important changes in sound resulting from small adjustments in tonearm height. I still do not want to be determining a particular tonearm height for each record, and then adjust the height of the tonearm every time I play that particular record, but there is no doubt that Peter is correct that slight changes in VTA can result in big differences in the quality of the sound coming off that LP.
I will repeat this paragraph and continue this discussion on Peter’s system thread, “Sublime Sound.”
7) I also took away from this visit a renewed appreciation for the importance of matching your speaker to your room. I think one reason Peter is getting great sound is because he has thought carefully about the size of his room and what size speaker is best matched with it.
I told Peter that he literally would not want the M6 because I think it would overwhelm the room and he would be manufacturing a bass problem.
This town is a beautiful New England town right on the water, with bays and marinas and boats easily visible from many locations. The town originally was a serious fishing town, and many of its inhabitants continue that cherished heritage with a love of the sea and boating and locally-caught seafood. The United States Navy can trace in its origins back to this town.
Peter and his beautiful wife, Anne, live in a charming house built in 1792, and which literally is only steps from the harbor. Peter is a member of one of the local yacht clubs, and the dock where Peter ties his shuttle boat, which he uses to reach the mooring of his sailboat, is a two minute walk from his house. For someone who loves boating and the sea Peter’s house and marina and boat set-up could not be easier or more ideal.
Peter and I have always communicated easily and, while we have always assumed that we do not have exactly the same taste in sound, we have always understood clearly where each other is coming from. I have never, personally, enjoyed the sound of Magico speakers driven by solid-state electronics (especially Soulution, Alon!), so I was assuming that I would find Peter’s system to sound bright or analytical or fatiguing in some way. Peter believed that I would not, and I wanted to believe Peter, but it just wasn’t clear to me a priori how solid-state on Magico was going to sound natural to me.
After several listening sessions over the course of a week, both with and without alcohol, I heard no trace of brightness or edginess or harshness or sterility in Peter’s system. That is your humble reporter’s considered judgment.
Peter has spent a very long time learning about the components in his system and understanding how they relate to each other in his system. Since replacing his Magico Mini IIs with Magico Q3s Peter has spent months experimenting with and fine-tuning the location if his speakers in the room and and the toe-in of the speakers. This dedication and painstaking attention to details has achieved a sound that I find very natural. I think Peter has achieved a sound from his system which justifies the system being called a reference system.
I think Peter’s system is revealing and consistent and is a stable base to which the sound of other systems can be understandably compared. I can describe the sound of Peter’s system and compare it confidently to the sound I hear from other systems. After spending a week with Peter I think I have in my head, presently anyway, an accurate understanding of what his system does and how it sounds.
One way to put it is that the sound from Peter’s system is a sound I felt very familiar with. If I closed my eyes and you told me I was listening to my prior long-term system in the smaller room of my house in which I set it up I would have thought I was listening to my system. The sound is what I was used to hearing from my own system in terms of tonality and dynamics and detail.
We played all of my test tracks multiple times. There are many little cues and moments across my various test tracks which I listen for when evaluating systems and which, in Peter’s system, sounded to me the way they used to sound in my long-time prior stereo system.
Peter’s room is not a dedicated listening room, and it is not big, but he manages to achieve real depth. On my test tracks I heard reference level (for dynamic driver loudspeakers) transparency. I heard full-deflection dynamics. I heard a natural tone. Jennifer Warnes’ voice and Thelma Houston’s voice and Jeff Buckley’s voice and Neil Young’s voice and Stevie Nicks’ voice sounded like I think they should sound on a stereo system, and how I was accustomed to hearing them sound on my prior stereo.
1) I have never heard Pass Labs amplifiers before, but, in Peter’s system, they have a warm-ish, kind of tube-ish sound. I heard no attenuation of detail or smoothing of edge transients or any absence of dynamics. I also heard no fatiguing sound or edginess or leading edge artifacts. I would say Peter’s XA-160.5s sounded like what I am used to hearing from tubes. (I assume without knowing that I am hearing slightly greater dynamics and detail retrieval and a shade dryer-sound from the Pass Labs amps than I believe I would hear from tube amplifiers.)
2) The Pass Labs equipment is beautifully machined and built. The build quality and metal machining is equal to anything I’ve seen in the high end.
3) Peter told me that the SME 30/12 turntable is considered by some people to be a little bit life-less or a little bit dead-sounding. I heard no evidence of that whatsoever.
4) My broadest conclusion of general applicability is that we spend way too much time switching components in and out of our systems hoping to achieve a certain sound without taking the time and effort to optimize each individual component in the system. I believe that Peter’s system sounds as good as it does, and shatters certain prejudices or assumptions about Magico loudspeakers and SME turntables and solid-state electronics, because he has spent a very long time sweating every detail in the system — from speaker positioning to acoustic room treatment to cartridge adjustment — and then living with it for a long time and then sweating all of those
details all over again. If we spent as much time tweaking and optimizing a particular component in our system as we spend reading about components and rapidly swapping them in and out of our systems due to dissatisfaction we might achieve a straighter-line path to sonic happiness.
It is now plausible to me that people who find Magico speakers bright or analytical have never heard them in systems which have been lovingly adjusted and tuned carefully over a long period of time.
5) The coherence of Peter’s system counts for me as a another data point in favor of employing one brand of electronics across the entire system. I would have loved to have had some tube component to swap into Peter’s system, and I have to assume that if I had substituted one of the Pass Labs components for a tube component I would have heard an increase in liquidity which I would have liked. But would I have achieved that increase in liquidity at some cost to dynamics or detail retrieval or transparency? I don’t know.
6) Peter proved to me repeatedly the important changes in sound resulting from small adjustments in tonearm height. I still do not want to be determining a particular tonearm height for each record, and then adjust the height of the tonearm every time I play that particular record, but there is no doubt that Peter is correct that slight changes in VTA can result in big differences in the quality of the sound coming off that LP.
I will repeat this paragraph and continue this discussion on Peter’s system thread, “Sublime Sound.”
7) I also took away from this visit a renewed appreciation for the importance of matching your speaker to your room. I think one reason Peter is getting great sound is because he has thought carefully about the size of his room and what size speaker is best matched with it.
I told Peter that he literally would not want the M6 because I think it would overwhelm the room and he would be manufacturing a bass problem.
