Visit to Zerostargeneral’s Pnoe/Thomas Mayer/VYGER System

[microstrip]

(...) I like that you don't mince around in saying 'if you want this, copy it.' Perhaps you and mr. zerostar could comment on the room and what factors it plays in the results. To me it is substantially large. How much of the system's context needs to be copied?

A very interesting question. Although my experience is limited, a few cases I know of people who tried to copy exact systems were complete failures, and not just because of the room. Extremely tuned systems are very sensitive!

Listening to and enjoying music in an high-end system is much more than gear - it is also a life style. I have listened to excellent systems that I would consider significantly better than mine, but I still prefer my system in my room.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Also, where is the joy in that? Fortuitously come by a system that ticks every box, and just transplant it, lock stock and barrel?
Midgets, standing on the shoulders of giants.

No, write your own story. Don't plagiarise.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thanks for your excellent report. Any photos please?

We focused on getting to know each other and on listening to music. I didn’t focus on photos because I thought that zerostargeneral’s room is already well represented in photos on the forum.

 

[Ron Resnick]

There is no doubt the big Pnoes at over seven feet tall and over three feet wide need a big room to “breathe.”

 

[Ron Resnick]

I have believed strongly for a couple of years now that musical preference drives loudspeaker selection. If my primary musical genre interests were jazz or jazz plus + classical I would replicate zerostargeneral’s system.

This system is now my top choice for jazz, solo instruments and ensembles, for sure.

I have come to love and to become emotionally connected with the jazz pieces and the classical pieces I like. But my personal musical genre preferences remain primarily vocals and rock/pop. “Girl with guitar” music does not require the incredible speed and instantaneous rise time of this system. I still love what electrostatic speakers and ribbon speakers achieve on vocals.

 

[DaveC]

7 meters wide 11 meters long 5 meters high. One meter away from both side walls. Two from front wall. This is a dream for me. I dont know about pnoe but Cessaro benefits greatly from larger room. I have heard three smaller Cessaro systems in rooms bigger than mine. They all breath so freely and have better staging than mine especially on depth.

The room size is just as ideal as the rest of the system! I think many underestimate the benefit of high ceilings, my listening room has 4m height and it's just so much better than the standard ~2.5m.


Ron, I am curious what range of SPLs did you listen to the music at? Can the system hit realistic symphonic peaks?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Ron, it's always disarming hearing a higher level system. Not just better, but superior in most if not every respect. I was pretty cocky about my system until 2015. And then Mark of Sablon Audio suggest I go listen to Blue58's Duos based system. Cue going there, coming home, and wanting to throw my system out of the window. On top of Ked's less than stellar take on my sound.

I'm hoping your mind is not too discombobulated by yr visit. Clarity in sound is to be strived for. The General's sound is as clear as music piped direct to the pleasure centres of the brain w absolutely no encumberances.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Also, where is the joy in that? Fortuitously come by a system that ticks every box, and just transplant it, lock stock and barrel?
Midgets, standing on the shoulders of giants.

No, write your own story. Don't plagiarise.

Not everyone wants to drive themselves crazy, Marc.

 

[microstrip]

(...) No, write your own story. Don't plagiarise.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Not everyone wants to drive themselves crazy, Marc.

Ron, this hobby is equal part Sado (bank balance, friendly fire on partners) and Masochistic (I cannot BELIEVE i bought that POS!).

 

[microstrip]

7 meters wide 11 meters long 5 meters high. One meter away from both side walls. Two from front wall. This is a dream for me. I dont know about pnoe but Cessaro benefits greatly from larger room. I have heard three smaller Cessaro systems in rooms bigger than mine. They all breath so freely and have better staging than mine especially on depth.

I am going to reduce it to 6 meters wide, 10 meters long and 3.7 meters high - probably Santa Clauss will see that I am easier to please than you and will visit me first!

Although I like big rooms and space I do not like to have too much space between speakers - for me anything greater than 3.5 meters between them seems to make the sound artificially big.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Francisco, I'm truly skeptical one can transplant someone else's system fully into a new space, and hope for an identical outcome.

Ask Ked. His take on MikeL's sound is that it's a finely balanced synergy of gear interaction, room dynamics. Mike's personality is writ large in the resultant sound. Do we really believe Mike's system would sound remotely as good in Ron's more challenging space?

My take on The General's sound is that it's part and parcel of his exemplary space, and his DNA runs thru his system.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

Francisco, I'm truly skeptical one can transplant someone else's system fully into a new space, and hope for an identical outcome.

Ask Ked. His take on MikeL's sound is that it's a finely balanced synergy of gear interaction, room dynamics. Mike's personality is writ large in the resultant sound. Do we really believe Mike's system would sound remotely as good in Ron's more challenging space?

My take on The General's sound is that it's part and parcel of his exemplary space, and his DNA runs thru his system.

Marc - I simply don’t agree with this. It is adding unnecessary audiophile myth to this equation. If you ask the General himself, he’ll gladly tell you that his room is the weakest link since he hasn’t paid *any* attention to it since he is in process of building a dedicated space elsewhere. His room is a total nightmare acoustically for most speaker systems and has no treatment at all - none. The sheer size does obviously make sense and help when using the Pnoes but to think that you can’t put this exact system in another similarly sized big room and not get similarly decent results with the same software - that is audiophile myth. This “DNA” thing - not sure what that means.

Mike’s system and room is obviously different. You obviously can’t dump Mike’s system in a similar big room (with no treatment) and expect similar outcomes. Mike has tirelessly slaved over optimising that room for many years. It is an example of one of the finest purpose built audiophile dens out there imho.

 

[ack]

It's always been my belief that the better the ears the better the system; the best systems belong to those with extensive exposure to live music, with sufficiently deep pockets

 

[bonzo75]

Francisco, I'm truly skeptical one can transplant someone else's system fully into a new space, and hope for an identical outcome.

Ask Ked. His take on MikeL's sound is that it's a finely balanced synergy of gear interaction, room dynamics. Mike's personality is writ large in the resultant sound. Do we really believe Mike's system would sound remotely as good in Ron's more challenging space?

My take on The General's sound is that it's part and parcel of his exemplary space, and his DNA runs thru his system.

Hi no, systems like Mike's are based on room, tweaks, and many things other than the components itself. In the case of G's system, if anything, room is a weak link. It is big, but there is nothing else in the room that says good acoustics. His system is great because he has able to quickly cut through BS to identify the best driver, how to drive it (Mayer 46, unlike people trying SETs on apogee or Krell or class D on horns), the best LT with a cart that sounds bad in may set ups but here contributes to the best analog you will hear. Having heard the system with Mayer 211, NAT Magma, and Audio consulting, Etsuro Cobalt, an MSL Platinum, Vyger phono, all of which can be fine amps in some other systems, it is quite apparent why Ron said copy it. Even swapping valves on the preamp can cause a quick downgrade.

I think the key reason for this is having such good music and records he has excellent listening points and frankly if you stick to the basics of look out for what is good on piano, violin, then orchestra and jazz, you can't go wrong. His listening and system build comes out of simplifying rather than complicating.

As I told Ron today while he was putting ice in his English breakfast tea (yes he does that), just as our listening experience evolves from pre panels and post panels, pre analog and post analogue, and pre horns and post horns, there is pre listening to G's system and post. And then when you get some of the recordings and use them for audition, you will be able to cut through so much audiophile BS.

So yes, with a decent room size, the system can be copied. You will need some of those recordings though. And preference and costs aside, many horn systems can be copied. If you copy Tang's system, you will get a similar sound provided you have a decent size. But if you copy an excellent Dagostino - cone/planar system, room will play lots of issues.

 

[bonzo75]

Looks like Bill and I wrote the same thing

 

[spiritofmusic]

Bill, I'll disagree w you
Nah nah na nah nah Lol

Why is Mike's system anymore special or optimised?
Mike and The General have equal priority and specialism of components
The fact Mike may have spent more signifies that his choices are just pricier, not better.

The only genuine difference is the effort/expense spent on the room itself, and maybe power sent to it, via Mike's EquiTech.

If we're truly saying Mike's system only excels because of his slavish devotion to building that room, are we saying it would be way poorer in a bog standard room w no atrention to acoustic detail?

 

[morricab]

Marc - I simply don’t agree with this. It is adding unnecessary audiophile myth to this equation. If you ask the General himself, he’ll gladly tell you that his room is the weakest link since he hasn’t paid *any* attention to it since he is in process of building a dedicated space elsewhere. His room is a total nightmare acoustically for most speaker systems and has no treatment at all - none. The sheer size does obviously make sense and help when using the Pnoes but to think that you can’t put this exact system in another similarly sized big room and not get similarly decent results with the same software - that is audiophile myth. This “DNA” thing - not sure what that means.

Mike’s system and room is obviously different. You obviously can’t dump Mike’s system in a similar big room (with no treatment) and expect similar outcomes. Mike has tirelessly slaved over optimising that room for many years. It is an example of one of the finest purpose built audiophile dens out there imho.

I have either had extremely good luck with rooms or the room itself matters with some types of systems far less than people want to admit and it is an easy scapegoat when things don't gel. I manage to get extremely good sound (not only my own assessment) with little to no room treatment but focus on speakers that minimize room interaction in the first place and the best electronics I can afford in terms of tone and dynamics. In my old apartment that was rather live (but all concrete, which helped quite a bit) the solution was large (really large) planar dipoles that minimized side wall and floor/ceiling reflections. In my current residence, where I can't go with planars even if I wanted to, it is with horns that restrict the dispersion...and again brick/concrete walls AND sloped ceilings.

I would not use a conventional, wide dispersion cone/dome speaker in a small room with little to no treatment. I tried this back in the day and realized quickly that without large investment in treatment it would ever sound as I had hoped...I went quickly then to alternative speaker designs that work in those environments better...and boy did they!

So, it really depends on the speaker concept as to how room sensitive and then also just how poor the room really is, IMO.

 

[bonzo75]

It's always been my belief that the better the ears the better the system; the best systems belong to those with extensive exposure to live music, with sufficiently deep pockets

I personally think all have good ears, but have been misled over years. When I got into audiophilia, I had no idea of Stockfisch and Dina Krall. Dealers got me to listen to it and taught me to evaluate this way. That was so unnatural yet I did it, at shows people did it, the attributes it evaluated on. And when we listen to the same thing daily, all our evaluations are based with that sound template in mind. It took me 6 months after selling off my speakers to reset, along with live exposure. It takes that much time for live shows to erase and replace the sound memory of sh**y audiophile music. And both Bill and I ran into the same surprise in the Munich Silbatone room and G's room. Spend a day at Munich in the Silbatone room and see what they play, and what other rooms play. When people realize it, they shift back. That's why Bill traded all his gear in and switched. It was not that he had good ears one day and bad the next, and good again, it is just that this industry has evolved to mislead many, and G believes in spreading the goodness of music, something that many of the commercial dealers could learn from.

 

[morricab]

Bill, I'll disagree w you
Nah nah na nah nah Lol

Why is Mike's system anymore special or optimised?
Mike and The General have equal priority and specialism of components
The fact Mike may have spent more signifies that his choices are just pricier, not better.

The only genuine difference is the effort/expense spent on the room itself, and maybe power sent to it, via Mike's EquiTech.

If we're truly saying Mike's system only excels because of his slavish devotion to building that room, are we saying it would be way poorer in a bog standard room w no atrention to acoustic detail?

I haven't heard either system but I can imagine the General's system being less dependent on all the room treatment than Mikes.