Here's a post I never thought I'd write, but now that I've had the USB board in for a week, I'm obliged to comment. Be warned, what I'm about to say is outright heresy. To begin, the USB board break-in is fairly predictable. The first day gives you a taste of what's to come and it is no wonder that you will be up half the night listening. Then things shut down for a few days. There's a tad of brightness that might make you question your purchase and makes you wonder if all those accolades you've heard are deserved. But fear not, by day 5 things have smoothed out beautifully and by day 7, a new dawn emerges that will leave you wanting to put in an IV line and a catheter so you don't have to leave the listening room.
It was at this point that I decided to do the "ultimate" comparison and A/B an LP to a streaming source or file played through the Extreme/Lampizator. My analog rig is a Doehmann Helix One Mk II/ Reed 3P/ ZYX Uni Premium/Zanden 1200 MkIII, so its a worthy contender to enter the ring. I queued up track after track so I could simply switch level matched inputs remotely on the Soulution 725 preamp. Tracks were begun simultaneously so content was seamless as the switches were made. It is with great difficulty and amazement to learn that after decades of listening to music, a threshold has been crossed that now make these sort of A/B comparisons all but insignificant. We would all like to think we are good and experienced listeners, but I wouldn't bet so much as a Diet Pepsi that many could not distinguish my digital from analog sources with a probability of p < 0.05 in a blinded comparison. Let's be clear.That doesn't mean there aren't differences when performing this task. But for all intent and purpose, they become obstacles to enjoying the music unless you really, really,
really like playing the game of trivial pursuit.
Here is my most important take away. If I had a dollar for every time I've perseverated about a hundredth of a degree of VTA, a change of tracking force of 0.05 grams, a miniscule change of anti-skate, a tiny, tiny amount of azimuth, and the nightmare of dealing with LPs of different thickness, I could probably have bought a pair of Chronosonics several times over. This is the real horror of our beloved hobby and its one that nobody really want to talk about because its so damn exasperating. If you think that the entire microcosm of cartridge/arm geometry doesn't change for different record thicknesses, then we just see things differently. It's no surprise that even the most avid hobbyist would wish this subject would simply disappear as it's simply too depressing to think about it other than to say its somewhat of a minor miracle we manage to coax out the occasional great sonics we do from our TT rigs.
But things are different now, and I mean as of right now. This very moment. At least for me. Frankly, I never thought I would see this day, but here it is. There surely might be times I choose to play an LP and open up that pandora's box of hoping that my set-up is truly optimum for the LP that's spinning at the moment. Or... I can simply push a button, start listening, and smile. It really has come down to that. That's why, at least for me, the Taiko Extreme with the USB board is genuinely a game changer.
It really all comes down to these words of wisdom that a good friend of mine told me this morning. (No names, but his initials are SW
) and here is what he said. "All you have to do now to hear great music is push a button because its so f***n simple and so f***n good." End of story.
