My Xmas present: copper foil... Or why cable networks must be shielded
I have to admit, 2017 has been my best year ever: health, stable family, kid is doing incredibly well in school, job stability, and lots of audio modifications that have yielded tremendous sonic benefits - I cannot be more thankful.
And the latest sonic breakthrough started with a rather odd series of events, a few months ago when I had the Vivaldi 2.0 DAC in, along with the Transparent Ref XL digital cable. With that utterly stupid digital cable that everyone raves about, the Vivaldi would just lose the lock, and I ended up swapping my MIT MA-X cable between it and my modified Alpha DAC. Apparently the Vivaldi and my Spectral transport have an tight PLL loop. Fine... So the Vivaldi 2.0 and Alpha sounded very much the same, although I had to level-match them by lowering the Vivaldi volume, and it did sound a little better at 0dB gain, though not exactly what I would call "stunning", but surely extremely good.
To prove that the MIT network boxes are susceptible to any type of noise, I experimented with the MIT phono high-level interconnects which I moved close to the DAC, and then muted the XP-25 phono - et voila, at close range, and with the preamp gain at max, dead silence but there was just a tiny bit of buzz. I then moved the network boxes away from the DAC, and the buzz went away... OK, we now know they will pick up some noise, even if by a small amount.
Then, thinking about the amount of noise that the silly Transparent must have been picking up, I decided the other day to copper-shield all of my MIT network boxes, including the MA-X digital, with all shields routed to phono ground (a convenience). And then, my jaw dropped with digital (and less so with my phono)... the level of vividness through this modified Alpha DAC truly shocked me: the wind instruments in the Proteus 7 CD (aka James Bond, as we've been calling it internally and in these pages) sounded so incredibly life-like and even more dynamic (micro and macro) - this is not funny.
I had to make sure the evaluation was not just expectation bias, so I went back to the Mahler 2nd CD that I've written about here many times, and especially those tiny triangles that Al and I were discussing earlier, which would appear and disappear based on the digital volume control. Well, they are all now there and very vivid, and at the lower digital volume setting we settled on. Well, this proved again that digital volume settings do deal with noise differently. I had to repeat the listening test the next day to be sure - and yes, the vividness and increase in timbral accuracy are unmistakable and classes higher... this is no expectation bias. Shocking results, to be quite honest. I kept marveling at the truthful timpani and piano attack...
Let me make this clear: redbook like this I have not yet heard from any other digital component that has graced my system, nor in a dealer setting, save for the full Vivaldi 2.0 stack: not the Vivaldi 2.0 DAC although it might match or surpass the Alpha now with the shielded cables; not the Spectral SDR-4000SV which I admired so but just couldn't stop thinking it needs more work; not the Rossini which not only sounded euphonic, it actually sometimes sounded wrong; and certainly, at the bottom of the pit, not the older Spectral SDR-4000SL and its earlier revisions which sounded simply OK, if not broken by today's standards.
Now, here's the real kicker: I did not get _anywhere_ near this kind of sound at Goodwin's with the new DMA-500 amps driving the Magico M3s, and the 4000SV and 30SV, using much more expensive MIT cables - after three auditions now. Now more than ever, I think the M3s are just one broken speaker in an absolute high-end context (not that they are not a much better speaker than most), but I do need to confirm that by bringing the 500s into my system, to confirm they are not themselves broken. As it currently stands, there is just no way I would ever choose the M3s over my speakers.
I have nothing further to say right now, so I am going to leave final judgement to others when they come visit, but from this vantage point, I have utmost respect for the Berkeley folks, who have apparently given me a solid platform which I can modify and make sing so well - I still bet they are using JFETs in the analog output section. This digital now sounds so analog, it's frankly fascinating - and maybe for the first time I'll say, I just LOVE redbook when done right.
So much progress with so little money spent this year.
I have to admit, 2017 has been my best year ever: health, stable family, kid is doing incredibly well in school, job stability, and lots of audio modifications that have yielded tremendous sonic benefits - I cannot be more thankful.
And the latest sonic breakthrough started with a rather odd series of events, a few months ago when I had the Vivaldi 2.0 DAC in, along with the Transparent Ref XL digital cable. With that utterly stupid digital cable that everyone raves about, the Vivaldi would just lose the lock, and I ended up swapping my MIT MA-X cable between it and my modified Alpha DAC. Apparently the Vivaldi and my Spectral transport have an tight PLL loop. Fine... So the Vivaldi 2.0 and Alpha sounded very much the same, although I had to level-match them by lowering the Vivaldi volume, and it did sound a little better at 0dB gain, though not exactly what I would call "stunning", but surely extremely good.
To prove that the MIT network boxes are susceptible to any type of noise, I experimented with the MIT phono high-level interconnects which I moved close to the DAC, and then muted the XP-25 phono - et voila, at close range, and with the preamp gain at max, dead silence but there was just a tiny bit of buzz. I then moved the network boxes away from the DAC, and the buzz went away... OK, we now know they will pick up some noise, even if by a small amount.
Then, thinking about the amount of noise that the silly Transparent must have been picking up, I decided the other day to copper-shield all of my MIT network boxes, including the MA-X digital, with all shields routed to phono ground (a convenience). And then, my jaw dropped with digital (and less so with my phono)... the level of vividness through this modified Alpha DAC truly shocked me: the wind instruments in the Proteus 7 CD (aka James Bond, as we've been calling it internally and in these pages) sounded so incredibly life-like and even more dynamic (micro and macro) - this is not funny.
I had to make sure the evaluation was not just expectation bias, so I went back to the Mahler 2nd CD that I've written about here many times, and especially those tiny triangles that Al and I were discussing earlier, which would appear and disappear based on the digital volume control. Well, they are all now there and very vivid, and at the lower digital volume setting we settled on. Well, this proved again that digital volume settings do deal with noise differently. I had to repeat the listening test the next day to be sure - and yes, the vividness and increase in timbral accuracy are unmistakable and classes higher... this is no expectation bias. Shocking results, to be quite honest. I kept marveling at the truthful timpani and piano attack...
Let me make this clear: redbook like this I have not yet heard from any other digital component that has graced my system, nor in a dealer setting, save for the full Vivaldi 2.0 stack: not the Vivaldi 2.0 DAC although it might match or surpass the Alpha now with the shielded cables; not the Spectral SDR-4000SV which I admired so but just couldn't stop thinking it needs more work; not the Rossini which not only sounded euphonic, it actually sometimes sounded wrong; and certainly, at the bottom of the pit, not the older Spectral SDR-4000SL and its earlier revisions which sounded simply OK, if not broken by today's standards.
Now, here's the real kicker: I did not get _anywhere_ near this kind of sound at Goodwin's with the new DMA-500 amps driving the Magico M3s, and the 4000SV and 30SV, using much more expensive MIT cables - after three auditions now. Now more than ever, I think the M3s are just one broken speaker in an absolute high-end context (not that they are not a much better speaker than most), but I do need to confirm that by bringing the 500s into my system, to confirm they are not themselves broken. As it currently stands, there is just no way I would ever choose the M3s over my speakers.
I have nothing further to say right now, so I am going to leave final judgement to others when they come visit, but from this vantage point, I have utmost respect for the Berkeley folks, who have apparently given me a solid platform which I can modify and make sing so well - I still bet they are using JFETs in the analog output section. This digital now sounds so analog, it's frankly fascinating - and maybe for the first time I'll say, I just LOVE redbook when done right.
So much progress with so little money spent this year.
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