Visit to Marc C.'s (SpiritOfMusic's) House in England

[spiritofmusic]

Justin, you have an open invite as ever. I know I'm waaaaay distant from you. But if the temptation to visit EAnglia gets too much, you're always welcome. Like Barry where vinyl/Zus is sooo different from streaming/horns, you'd have the same comparison disconnect to start coming from streaming/ribbons. But Barry really took to my sound, and especially vinyl, way easier than he thought he would, maybe the same for you.

 

[manisandher]

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting Marc at his home, Victoria Chapel.

Firstly, a massive thanks to Marc and Ra for their hospitality. Now, onto the system…

I didn’t take a note of all the music we listened to, but it was an eclectic mix, ranging from classical to, of course… prog rock. Irrespective of genre, everything sounded eminently listenable. Let me break my opinions on the sound down into what impressed me, and where I felt there was still room for improvement.

What Impressed Me

1. Depth.

Marc’s listening room is very long, so he can afford to have his speakers 8’ out from the front wall. This really helps with the illusion of front-to-back depth. IMO it requires a certain level of resolution to create believable depth, and I felt that Marc’s system did this well.

2. Tonal Balance

There seemed to be a nice even spread of energy across the whole spectrum. I obviously didn’t perform any FFTs, but I didn’t notice any large or annoying room modes at play.

3. Vinyl Replay

Although I have 3 TTs myself, I’m very much a digital guy nowadays – my digital front end just sounds more realistic than any of my TTs, to my ears. But at Marc’s, I clearly preferred his vinyl over his digital. There really wasn’t anything wrong with his digital, it’s just that his vinyl setup had more separation and air. The separation especially was a real surprise. And there was a delicacy to the top end with vinyl that I really enjoyed.

Overall, I really enjoyed every piece of music that Marc played. And I have to say that this is so rarely the case at most of the demos I’ve attended. I’d also like to commend Marc for not turning up the volume and blasting the music out – some of the delicacy in the sound that I enjoyed so much might have been drowned out.

Room For Improvement (IMHO, of course)

1. Transient Attack

During every track, I would close my eyes for a short while to see if I could be fooled into thinking there was live music being played before me. Unfortunately, the answer was no in every case. The leading edges of real instruments have transients that seem to be fiendishly difficult to recreate accurately through replay systems. Unsurprisingly, the only speakers I’ve heard get close are horns.

Slightly related, I felt the bottom end was a touch soft at times.

2. Macro Dynamics

There wasn’t enough recreation of realistic dynamic range for my ultimate liking.

3. More Colour

This is a really difficult one to describe. I heard many shades of grey and hues of blue, but not so many reds, golds and silvers. I often refer to this as simply a lack of ‘sparkle’. But perhaps it’s just some form of weird synesthesia on my part.


I hope this post doesn’t sound overly negative, because this isn’t my overall impression of Marc’s system at all. It really does tick so many boxes. But ultimately, I’d have to describe it as more of a very pleasant oil painting than a high resolution photo.

Interestingly, just looking back over what I’ve written, I’ve experienced the three areas for improvement myself. These are exactly the sorts of things that I feel using AC transformers (isolation or balanced) seem to do to the sound. Just thinking intuitively, a transformer will increase the impedance of the AC feed, perhaps leading to the sorts of effects I heard. My recommendation to Marc would be to try to bypass his balanced transformer, if at all possible, just to see how it’s currently affecting the sound. I did exactly this with my 15KVA isolation transformer. My ultimate solution was to keep the transformer, but use an ultra-low impedance AC regenerator post transformer.

Thanks again Marc. And well done on putting together a system that makes you want to listen to music, which is ultimately what this hobby should be all about.

Mani.

 

[bonzo75]

Nice report, thanks.

I made the transient attack (Or lack of) point regarding NAT a few months ago, and I think it was dctom made the same observation after his visit. It can improve a bit with Soulution preamp (i heard Nat magma with Soulution pre after my positive experience if Soulution pre with Allnic) but not enough need different amps. That is only if it bothers him which I don't think it does. That said Anima can be really snappy so you will notice it more.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Thanks Mani, it was a pleasure having you up. There aren't that many opportunities to share time w other hifi nuts, so when it happens, it can be v worthwhile.

FWIW, I'd generally agree w yr conclusions on my system. My sound deffo favours tonal saturation and heft over absolute dynamics.

Now, this could be a function of my balanced power transformer, although I've never heard reports from other owners w balanced power commenting on dynamic shortfall.

All I can say here is that my first foray into balanced power 6 years ago addressed fuzziness in my system at the time, dynamics was one of the things impvd. And then moving to my current BPT, things impvd further in the bass extension and heft depts.

My conclusion based on these experiences is that balanced is not the cause of any pinching of dynamics or jump factor. But I can't say so categorically.

I'm more minded to say the cause is first the comparision of horns to box spkrs. My Zus are pretty fast, but they'll be left at the starters block in any race w horns. Horns will always have the ability to startle you re speed and attack.

I also know my Nat 211 monos are not the fastest amps in the world. 211s by definition are never going to keep up w lower power tubes like 46, 45, 2A3 etc. Certainly there's scope if I ever went horns to look at Thomas Mayer amps, which by reputation I know to be some of the fastest tube amps out there.

So I'll admit that I've kinda made a compromise, emphasis on tonal saturation, timbral texture and heft, maybe at the expense of absolute speed and jump factor. But a reasonable trade off IMHO.

My only divergence from Mani is on tonal color. Yes, my system doesn't do technicolor like eg Vyger Atlantis tt or Loit cdp or Lampi dac or Cessaro Liszts horns or Robert Koda K10 preamp or Ypsilon tube amps, that I've heard, but I find it's tonally full and varied, and critically has way better timbral accuracy and discrimination than I had back in my old room.

Indeed, the Koda pre I demoed for 2 weeks a few years back was so colourful, it kinda distracted from the music. You can have too much beauty.

Other than systems like The General's Pnoe based setup, it's hard to have it all. Even those Pnoes possibly favour speed and transparency over heft (haven't heard them enough, but it was one impression). I've kinda evolved towards tonal saturation, timbral accuracy and heft as the result of 22 years of system building, but I can certainly see why a visitor would pick up on the lack of other attributes.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting Marc at his home, Victoria Chapel.

Firstly, a massive thanks to Marc and Ra for their hospitality. Now, onto the system…

I didn’t take a note of all the music we listened to, but it was an eclectic mix, ranging from classical to, of course… prog rock. Irrespective of genre, everything sounded eminently listenable. Let me break my opinions on the sound down into what impressed me, and where I felt there was still room for improvement.

What Impressed Me

1. Depth.

Marc’s listening room is very long, so he can afford to have his speakers 8’ out from the front wall. This really helps with the illusion of front-to-back depth. IMO it requires a certain level of resolution to create believable depth, and I felt that Marc’s system did this well.

2. Tonal Balance

There seemed to be a nice even spread of energy across the whole spectrum. I obviously didn’t perform any FFTs, but I didn’t notice any large or annoying room modes at play.

3. Vinyl Replay

Although I have 3 TTs myself, I’m very much a digital guy nowadays – my digital front end just sounds more realistic than any of my TTs, to my ears. But at Marc’s, I clearly preferred his vinyl over his digital. There really wasn’t anything wrong with his digital, it’s just that his vinyl setup had more separation and air. The separation especially was a real surprise. And there was a delicacy to the top end with vinyl that I really enjoyed.

Overall, I really enjoyed every piece of music that Marc played. And I have to say that this is so rarely the case at most of the demos I’ve attended. I’d also like to commend Marc for not turning up the volume and blasting the music out – some of the delicacy in the sound that I enjoyed so much might have been drowned out.

Room For Improvement (IMHO, of course)

1. Transient Attack

During every track, I would close my eyes for a short while to see if I could be fooled into thinking there was live music being played before me. Unfortunately, the answer was no in every case. The leading edges of real instruments have transients that seem to be fiendishly difficult to recreate accurately through replay systems. Unsurprisingly, the only speakers I’ve heard get close are horns.

Slightly related, I felt the bottom end was a touch soft at times.

2. Macro Dynamics

There wasn’t enough recreation of realistic dynamic range for my ultimate liking.

3. More Colour

This is a really difficult one to describe. I heard many shades of grey and hues of blue, but not so many reds, golds and silvers. I often refer to this as simply a lack of ‘sparkle’. But perhaps it’s just some form of weird synesthesia on my part.


I hope this post doesn’t sound overly negative, because this isn’t my overall impression of Marc’s system at all. It really does tick so many boxes. But ultimately, I’d have to describe it as more of a very pleasant oil painting than a high resolution photo.

Interestingly, just looking back over what I’ve written, I’ve experienced the three areas for improvement myself. These are exactly the sorts of things that I feel using AC transformers (isolation or balanced) seem to do to the sound. Just thinking intuitively, a transformer will increase the impedance of the AC feed, perhaps leading to the sorts of effects I heard. My recommendation to Marc would be to try to bypass his balanced transformer, if at all possible, just to see how it’s currently affecting the sound. I did exactly this with my 15KVA isolation transformer. My ultimate solution was to keep the transformer, but use an ultra-low impedance AC regenerator post transformer.

Thanks again Marc. And well done on putting together a system that makes you want to listen to music, which is ultimately what this hobby should be all about.

Mani.

That was some great feedback Mani, lots of positive for Marc and some interesting and potentially valuable insights.

There’s plenty of related history in synesthesia and music.... Messiaen, Liszt, Sibelius are notable examples oft-quoted (among other qualities) as seeing timbre as colour.

Interesting as the issue for me so often with less than ideal SS (in digital sources especially) but also in class D amps and in any electronics that utilise switchmode supplies in general is quite often an attached underlying (subtle but still characteristically prevailing) sense of greyness... sometimes as strident as glare, other times more just as an uncomfortable bleak opacity.

 

[spiritofmusic]

A very good example of this Graham is moving from the stock SMPS of the Straingauge energiser box, to custom LPS. Night and day difference, re less hardness and way more tonality. A different cart.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Marc I swapped the power cable on the stock psu of the chord TT2 to a much better shielded Shunyata power cable after having such very good results on the Mscaler. The TT2 is supercap powered so theoretically this should be less of an issue but still the change (all improvement) was easy to hear.

The fundamental characteristic shift was towards considerably more natural timbre richness taking out more of those last subtle traces of the synthetic (the TT2 is very definitely more a Chord of the organic and musical school) but the Mscaler TT2 combo with power supply dressing has also added more natural to that organic and musical.

I figure the instant you’ve got switch mode supplies in the room (in digital audio especially) you’ve really got to then go through and hardcore dress the system up in hazmat. This extra care allows for more of the colours of the musical spectrum to then shine through.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Yes Graham, not always apparent on Day One, but certainly so once you're rid of those polluting SMPSs.

One reason I'm reluctant to go down the multiple boxes streamer route is the need for seperate LPSs and resultant extra PCs.

So, one could end up w sonicTransporter i5, opticalRendu, opticalModule and switch, and 4 LPSs.

Throw in Chord TT2 and MScaler, and another 2 LPSs.

 

[cjfrbw]

"This is a really difficult one to describe. I heard many shades of grey and hues of blue, but not so many reds, golds and silvers. I often refer to this as simply a lack of ‘sparkle’. But perhaps it’s just some form of weird synesthesia on my part."

Strange, I have some synesthesia as well. At live concerts, with cymbals and high percussion, I will see purples and blues in there, with blue colors over intense white. Color tones are warmer as the sound spectrum veers towards 'midrange'. I seldom have this with reproduced music, it is more stark platinum on top, but sometimes it breaks through a bit with purple.

I guess synesthesia is odd, because everybody who has it 'sees' different colors with particular stimuli.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Graham, Mani's comments are more to do w his Animas, and horns generally, being able to portray tonal color, are variations of, way better than box spkrs.

I can't deny this, horns always seem better at full spectrum palette than other spkrs. I just don't fully concur that my Zus aren't more colorful (not colored) than he concludes.

Maybe I'd have to live w horns to see this more.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Nope, I'm not a syn-aesthete.

 

[manisandher]

So I'll admit that I've kinda made a compromise, emphasis on tonal saturation, timbral texture and heft, maybe at the expense of absolute speed and jump factor. But a reasonable trade off IMHO.

Absolutely. And you've achieved it admirably.

My only divergence from Mani is on tonal color. Yes, my system doesn't do technicolor... snip... but I find it's tonally full and varied, and critically has way better timbral accuracy and discrimination than I had back in my old room.

I suspected it would be difficult to express in words what I meant by 'more colour'. I certainly didn't mean to imply that your system didn't have good timbral accuracy, because I think it does. Although I placed 'more colour' as a separate item, it might actually be related to 'transient attack'. I'm not sure.

I've kinda evolved towards tonal saturation, timbral accuracy and heft as the result of 22 years of system building...

And you've done a great job!

Mani.

 

[manisandher]

Interesting as the issue for me so often with less than ideal SS (in digital sources especially) but also in class D amps and in any electronics that utilise switchmode supplies in general is quite often an attached underlying (subtle but still characteristically prevailing) sense of greyness... sometimes as strident as glare, other times more just as an uncomfortable bleak opacity.

I think we must have very similar ways of hearing these things.

I lived with Hypex class D amps (their older UcD range, and not their newer NCores) for a year or so, and hated pretty much every second of it. I was attempting to go the fully active route at the time, with a pair of Pass Labs XVR-1 active crossovers and Wilson Benesch Chimera speakers, and required 3 powerful amps per channel. My wife loved the sound (loads of deep bass), but I really, really hated it. Grey and lifeless as hell.

Introducing an SMPS anywhere in the system (even if it's not actually part of the chain itself) seems to add glare to the sound. I refuse to have any of them anywhere near my system. Hence even my audio PC has a linear PSU.

Mani.

 

[bonzo75]

"This is a really difficult one to describe. I heard many shades of grey and hues of blue, but not so many reds, golds and silvers. I often refer to this as simply a lack of ‘sparkle’. But perhaps it’s just some form of weird synesthesia on my part."

Strange, I have some synesthesia as well. At live concerts, with cymbals and high percussion, I will see purples and blues in there, with blue colors over intense white. Color tones are warmer as the sound spectrum veers towards 'midrange'. I seldom have this with reproduced music, it is more stark platinum on top, but sometimes it breaks through a bit with purple.

I guess synesthesia is odd, because everybody who has it 'sees' different colors with particular stimuli.

I think many people conclude platinum, tonally grey is uncolored, and tonally colored is colored. For me if the platinum color stays with different recordings, it is colored, and if the tonal colors change with different recordings it is uncolored. As such I find a lot of digital platinum, as well as some modern cone speakers, a lot of SS electronics. A lot of push pull valves and Kondo type electronics are colored where the tonal colors are present but do not change sufficiently with recordings, so the fun is in figuring out how to set up something where the tonal colors reflect true (or a reasonable facsimile of true) colors per recordings.

 

[spiritofmusic]

I don't have the facility to see tones as colors, not in any meaningful way. For me, it's tonal saturation/density and timbral accuracy that means more. And what I judge systems on more than anything else.

This applies to live unamplified too. I didn't hear a spectrum of colors when I attended a Dvorak/Smetana/Rimsky Korsakov concert the other day, just a spectrum of different timbres and densities, of course w quicksilver dynamics.

And it's the restriction of said dynamics I'm most aware of when listening to the same pieces at home.

But actual colors? Nope, I'm mainly colorblind here.

 

[the sound of Tao]

I don't have the facility to see tones as colors, not in any meaningful way. For me, it's tonal saturation/density and timbral accuracy that means more. And what I judge systems on more than anything else.

This applies to live unamplified too. I didn't hear a spectrum of colors when I attended a Dvorak/Smetana/Rimsky Korsakov concert the other day, just a spectrum of different timbres and densities, of course w quicksilver dynamics.

And it's the restriction of said dynamics I'm most aware of when listening to the same pieces at home.

But actual colors? Nope, I'm mainly colorblind here.

Just means that you’re a correctly wired model Marc... probably even better wired than the Citroen DS.

I’ve always been a little loosely terminated myself or so my loved ones tell me.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Oh Graham, as they say "one cap short of a crossover".

 

[the sound of Tao]

I think we must have very similar ways of hearing these things.

I lived with Hypex class D amps (their older UcD range, and not their newer NCores) for a year or so, and hated pretty much every second of it. I was attempting to go the fully active route at the time, with a pair of Pass Labs XVR-1 active crossovers and Wilson Benesch Chimera speakers, and required 3 powerful amps per channel. My wife loved the sound (loads of deep bass), but I really, really hated it. Grey and lifeless as hell.

Introducing an SMPS anywhere in the system (even if it's not actually part of the chain itself) seems to add glare to the sound. I refuse to have any of them anywhere near my system. Hence even my audio PC has a linear PSU.

Mani.

Completely. Using synthesis to describe experiences is a shared thing for sure but there is latitude in expression.

The greyness for me is a diminishment of the life, vitality and clarity of the signal, it’s an annoying noise, like a subtle tinnitus that becomes most evident the minute it is taken out.

The doof doof of d class bass quality I feel is sometimes good for some who are right into the sound and physical engagement but not necessarily as good for those who love music and are into emotional engagement.

Your policy with going for a smps free zone is a most wise one Mani.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Oh Graham, as they say "one cap short of a crossover".

Lol

 

[spiritofmusic]

I guess a thread could be developed to compare and contrast how we experience our audio, and what things particularly highlight to us.

Synasthesia is something that, beyond a few examples, really doesn't register w me.

Ok, harsh digital, SMPS effects, brickwalling, hard 80s recordings, all have a whitewashing, grey, or highly reflective characteristic, almost like being dazzled by oncoming headlights, or an overcast cold drizzly day (the UK can often feel Class D on many days NO LOL).

My experience w the Koda K10 was the closest to color in music via a hifi system, and also the Liszts.

Maybe I'd pick up more on color in music if I listened more to expressive, neutral horns and SETs.

But since my experience in live concerts is not to massively hear in color, obv my brain is not wired this way.

Interestingly, aspects of sound reproduction I didn't dwell on before (when I didn't have them), I now really value in my system (now that I do have them), like better staging and imaging, tonal discrimination btwn recordings and timbral accuracy.

It's because the latter two are so much better here that I can really get into my classical and jazz way more than before.

But other than discriminating color in things like cymbals (as a result of me playing many Zildjians and Paistes in my time), I don't think I'll ever hear sounds in terms of blues, oranges etc.