Goals achieved? Can it be true?

[Superchunk]

I feel like talking about my system


To make a long story short, after many years of buying and selling and trying and auditioning I felt I had a pretty good handle on what I liked and what I wanted out of a system.


It seems kinda dumb to describe these tastes as everyone's interpretation of the words is probably different, but here goes so you know my priorities:

- able to handle all kinds of music. I listen to 90s noise rock, hip hop, electro moody, folk, punk, folk punk, Americana, alt country, rock, metal....etc... what I don't listen to much is audiophile stuff. I don't really do jazz. I don't know who steely Dan is other than a lot of people on audiophile forums seem to like him. I suspect some people are thinking "well he doesn't need or appreciate real high end gear then, get a vintage cerwin vega setup" and well, you would be wrong. So be done with those thoughts. What it does mean is I need a system capable of showing the beauty in a haunting vocal as well as being able to decipher and unclutter some music that is pretty tough to present spacially. It also needs to be able to smooth out some bad recordings while maintaining detail

- my priorities are in the midrange. I'm a big fan of harbeth. All the sparkling highs and deep, textured lows can't make up for an average vocal texturing for me. I need to hear every breath and wobble and I need to be able to close my eyes and hear a real person in my room. The highest and lowest are nice elements but I'm not wildly picky there, other than being pretty treble sensitive...I would rather none than any harshness.

- based on my experiments and experience I wanted the approach to be starting with ultra detailed and tweaking and maneuvering towards warmth. I feel this is more manageable than starting with warm and lush and tweaking towards detail and dynamics. So stuff like my beloved harbeth was out.


I am by nature a tweaker and a builder, with no real skills or experience with anything (I'm a historian and teacher by training). For example I bought a house that was essentially a teardown and gutted it to the studs and rebuilt it myself. I had no idea what I was doing. I build my own furniture and whatnot. I have slowly developed a shop full of tools and equipment.


So my dream was to build my own stereo components. With zero electrical knowledge and zero understanding of how any of it actually worked.


During covid I had plenty of time to sit on my phone and read and read, and so began my diy journey.


....pause for coffee

 

[AudioHR]

An interesting way of approaching your audio goals. I will be interested to see how things have worked out.

 

[hopkins]

Ditto

 

[Superchunk]

I want to note that my idea of how to judge a setup is: how quickly, and how deeply you are put into a place where nothing else exists but the music. We probably all have different ways to get there. But for me, my stereo is partially a meditation tool. I genuinely become...gone. completely lost and no longer in the room, mentally.


Soooo, I had never really had a digital setup. I used a blue sound for the odd time listening to Xmas music or something but very rarely. I have a kuzma, my sonic labs and allnic vinyl setup. I decided I wanted to give it a try so I bought a moderately priced dac from a trusted designer and used the node as a streamer. It was good. Not great but quite good.

So it seemed a sensible first step was to build a kit dac and streamer. I spent countless hours reading and learning the basics, I really knew nothing about the tech so I had to learn about sampling rates etc...

I went with an Ian Canada streamer using supercap power and his transport board and raspberry pi hats, and his clocks.

Easy build and obviously a huge step up from the node.

On the dac front I knew I was looking for something as smooth as possible. I'm one of those people who are very sensitive to "digital glare". The built in dac in my Vinnie Rossi, dartzeel and Levinson were quite good and really didn't have that glare, but I also didn't find them particularly engaging. So, this led me to wanting a tube output buffer. It's tubes that always seem to get me where I want to go.

So to meet these goals I decided on a tda 1541 based tube dac. Not too many out there, but there are some. But I wanted a kit. I found one after much hunting around from a fellow in Hungary. The chip I sourced from someone in Norway, I trusted him completely that it wasn't a fake, which I couldn't do with a random person. The dac is pretty simple and based on early lampizator, using 6n2p tubes.

The results have been spectacular. This was my first build and I'm still blown away by how good it is. For me to go out now and buy my vinyl setup would cost me around $25k cdn, and the streamer/dac cost roughly $1200. I feel the digital setup is 85-90% as enjoyable to listen to on most material.

It is lush, warm and superbly detailed. It truly sounds analogue in the good ways, and digital in the good ways. It has fantastic separation, loads of inner detail, a wide and deep soundstage and just the right presence. In my other, admittedly minor experience with digital, but with good brands, I never really was able to be convinced the musicians were in the room with me. It was missing body and presence.

So that was my first dive into diy and it was hugely successful, much more so than I expected. I understand there can be seen to be a bias towards what you built yourself, and there probably is, but also, I built it FOR myself, for my tastes, and frankly I nailed it.

Next steps will be clock upgrades, more advanced super cap power supply and cap upgrades on the dac board. It's fun to always have more you can do, while also being totally satisfied.

 

[Superchunk]

Not sure anyone will read this, and if they do, I apologize , but it's all been rolling around in my head for years now so I gotta get it out....

Lab12 Pre1 and Suono

About 10 years ago a childhood friend and longtime retailer basically insisted I buy the lab12 Suono. He was adamant it was one of two amplifiers under $10k worth owning. I've had it ever since, and have added the lab12 Pre1.

These are not fancy units. As srajan says, they are proletarian. I bought the Pre1 and (a second) Suono used for $3500.

I have tried to beat them over the years. I mean, I've had cables in my system worth more than my amplifier, there must be better stuff out there right? I've tried Vinnie Rossi, Levinson, Dartzeel, Master sound and a variety of others, many more, generally in the $15-25k range. Almost all of them did at least something better than the Lab12. But with each one, when I put the Lab12 back in I kinda just had a sigh of relief, like coming home after a nice holiday. That was fun, but this is where I really belong.

So I decided if these just sound "right" to me, maybe I can make some tweaks to improve them further. More detail would be the primary thing, a bit more transparency without mucking with the comfortable, entirely pleasant sound. Seems a reasonable ask for boutique parts.

Pre1:

The primary thing I wanted to try with the preamp was to replace the blue alps with a high end volume control. After much research I settled on the Khozmko shunt attenuator with remote (remote is non negotiable for me).

I purchased the Khozmko and about $500 in capacitors. Audio Note in the power supply with an audyn in for the output coupling and amtrans for input.

I only need two inputs and got it into my head to replace the unused inputs, relays and wiring associated with remote input selection etc... I purchased a gold plated elma (the one favoured by Pass afaik) rotary switch, to mount at the rear with short wiring.

RCA in and out was replaced with kle perfect harmony. Wiring with duelund and Cardas for one input, just to be able to compare and contrast.

Well, this little project ended up taking months and much frustration. I'll reiterate I have no idea what I'm doing. Turns out there was a relay to mute during input changes that I had to find and work around. Finally I got that sorted and everything hooked up as I wanted.

I wasn't sure what to expect. If I was biased at all it was towards a mild improvement, but I wouldn't have been surprised if I heard no change or if it was a bit worse, just thrown off the balance. Well, it's remarkably better. Everything I wanted to improve, improved, and the overall tonal balance and all the strengths remained. It is more detailed, with more texture and more air. You can hear deeper into the music. The proverbial veil lifting effect.

Hard to express how happy I am, both with the quality of musical enjoyment I'm experiencing but also that my many, many hours of reading and reading and learning and bumping up against frigging physics equations etc...actually yielded the exact results I was looking for. I'm genuinely very surprised. And I have to say, the sound I always loved but amped up a few notches....it's spectacular. It really is. Imo it could compete with anything, but that's not the point so whatever.

So with that fairly major success I ordered top tier duelund pio hybrid coupling caps, kle perfect harmony and some pricey neotech silver gold wire for the Suono power amp. Again, leaning towards greater transparency is the goal. I've been going back and forth between a triode labs parallel 2a3 amplifier that has the most incredible transparency, so I have a good reference point for my goals.

I only got the input and output caps for the Suono so far. Just those were far from inexpensive so I'll do power supply later. I have some nice vampire binding posts already, which will install later as well.

Parts just arrived today, will update when installed and run in.