Just returning from a visit to Barry. If an audiophile's job is never done, then Barry is deffo an audiophile Lol.
His big changes of course are install of Taiko Extreme and Aqua Formula XHD to replace his Taiko SGM and T&A Dac8.
I'll freely admit, in the first two visits despite being made fully aware of the Extreme's class leading resolution abilities, I had been left a little cold by how it then presented this information. To my ears it lacked holistic music making and mids density. I felt a little accosted by the leading edge of notes and hyper imaging, and less aware of tonal colours and anything approaching fleshed out.
This was apparent in both visits (prior to first lockdown, and last summer), and I assumed I was gonna be an outler in being an admirer of Extreme, just not a fan.
I revisited Barry two weeks ago, and listened to the Extreme with TAS, USBcard and USBdriver installed, and despite the system being sub par with stock 99 cents power cords installed (due to an earlier house circuit failure), it was instantly apparent that the Extreme sound had lost its previous very forward, etched, overly holographic/overly lean nature, and was much calmer and more grounded despite still sounding uber resolved. A massive step fwds.
Today I revisited, and a lot had happened in the intervening fortnight. King Sablons on Aqua, platinum plug/IEC, and Extreme, silver plug/IEC. I believe there may be a gold King in there somewhere too.
Java Triple shot LDR preamp replaced by Java V2.
Barry was a little unsure about his result, fretting about the dreaded burn in etc, but I was happier. I mean he's beavering away in the lab occasionally coming up for air, I'm providing a fresh perspective.
I detected a smidgen less uber transparency, but way greater heft and mids density.
It brought somewhat more presence to Dave Brubeck/Take Five (alternate takes), so maybe missing some previous absolute see through with the old setup, but welcome extra body on the horn and drums.
Christian McBride/Brouhaha was super kinetic as I'd expect on Extreme thru Duos horns, but again now a greater anchoring thru those all important mids/upper bass. All very well to have music expand in space, but its gotta be tangible as if it's come from somewhere real rather than being appearing wraith-like, in space/time.
Where the system really ticked boxes for me, and for the first time showed Extreme to be a tour de force musically, was on the last three tracks.
Brand X/Macrocosm mid 70s fusion can really be so synthetic and tizzy sounding on digital, but here the crazy polyryhymns and frankly joyous morass of effects and percussion, were really engaging, and critically sounded substantial and organic.
Frank Zappa/Inca Roads really presented very spookily close to vinyl with real solidity and deep tone in those all-critical mids frequencies, never once losing feel or texture despite the careering nature of the piece.
And Jeff Beck mid 70s fusion Goodbye Pork Pie Hat had a real tangible mids core to it's sound.
This is pretty substantial stuff, the Extreme was doing two things. Convincing me it's a hell of a source component...at last Lol. And critically, playing right in the best analog territory of mids density and tonal color.
A big call out to Mark's Sablon PCs. After the previous demo where the sound was good but not great on stock PCs, the various Kings absolutely are an integral reason why the sound was so good today.
And the Java V2 preamp imho has the edge on V1 for balancing the battle of uber transparency versus warmth more to my liking of greater warmth. Barry now needs to take time and agree w me Lol.
Just a final word to say it's been so good catching up w Barry twice now after such a long period of enforced isolation. A good thing we have plenty in common belong music and audio. Hes a fine audiophile and even better friend.
In summary, after a period where I thought Barry may have gone down the rabbit hole w Alice in search of the elusive, and imho unmusical desire for ultra transparency, he's pulling it back dramatically well at the eleventh hour, and his system again fully engages, but now with a level of deep resolution beyond his old SGM/Dac8.
Congrats, Barry.
) and the greater air provided by the Aqua. Soundstage is now larger and more palpable though limited by the dimensions of the room.
