ack's system - end of round 1

bonzo75 · Apr 25, 2016

I like Bruckner's 7th a lot, saw Haitink do it. Didn't like his 6, 8, and 9 at all, watched 6 and 8 conducted by Rattle this month. Too meandering and lost for me. The 7th also has a great version by Celibidache, though not sure how good the recording is as I have heard it off youtube.

I watched Mahler 2 again this month, will watch in June, and if I get the ticket, at Concertgebouw in September.

ack · Apr 25, 2016

Great experiences you are gathering... I wish I had the time to do all this, perhaps in my retirement! Come next May of 2017 to hear Mahler's 4 at the BSO, featuring Nelson's wife, soprano Kristine Opolais

bonzo75 · Apr 25, 2016

ack said:
Great experiences you are gathering... I wish I had the time to do all this, perhaps in my retirement!

I am 25 - 30 years from retirement! If I spend more on hifi, will probably have to work longer

PeterA · Apr 25, 2016

ack said:
Finally, a little bit more about "distortions"... Our friend PeterA posted a rather refreshing quip recently here and the following struck me as rather true in fact: "what you think you heard was far removed from what was originally in Mahler's head as he imagined the composition". Frequently, the original scores are distorted. Mahler's 2nd calls for a 5-minute silence between the first and second movements - hardly anyone observes that, but von Dohnanyi and Kaplan do (or did). The 9th calls for one harp, yet Bruno Walter introduced a second one and split their duties, and everyone has been following that ever since then. So there... distortions begin with the conductor and the orchestra. And yes, this is ALSO in jest!

Nice write up, ack. This quote of mine is actually a paraphrasing of one of my friend Peter Poltun's many stories . He once told me that the initial corruption occurs the moment the composer put pen to paper. The composition in the mind of the genius is translated into musical notation in two dimensions on paper to be later interpreted by conductors and musicians. That original translation onto paper is a corruption of what he imagined the music to sound like. Years later, the various interpretations are far removed from what was originally imagined by the great Mahler. Dr. Poltun is the Director of Archives for the Vienna State Opera. When I met him, he showed me a manuscript of one of Mahler's original scores with his notations on it. That was quite something.

Here is a photo of your seat, first row first balcony center seat, if I recall, from where I usually sit at Boston Symphony Hall.

ack · Apr 25, 2016

I usually sit on row C center, but occasionally A as well - but row A seats are really hard to come by. I am glad you have a picture of the balconies! The sound in the covered areas is not that good.

jadis · Oct 24, 2016

Last week I was in Boston for the first time in my life and I had a wonderful opportunity to meet a fellow member from WBF in the person of Tasos. Since I do not know anybody in the area, I asked Steve to help me find some members here. There were a couple more guys whom I messaged with in the persons of PeterA and Madfloyd but they live in the suburbs and I would have a difficult time reaching them since I rely only on the T. Tasos was very kind to pick me up at a T station near him, and on we went to his house with a very neat system as pictured here in these pages. I must say I have never met a more serious tweaker and modifier of audio equipments than Tasos. He showed me where he did his modifications, from the Martin Logan crossovers, to cables, to speaker terminals, to copper film shielding of his phono cables, and that only thing he did not modify in his system are the Spectral electronics. My listening impression after some choice cuts of classical, vocals, percussion Lps was that I've never heard any Martin Logan based system sound as clear, transparent, and dynamic as this in the past. Instruments are very clear, and as clear as can be without getting etched or to the cutting glass level. Piano attacks in the 45rpm Appassionata were incredibly dynamic and I had know Spectral electronics to produce excellent piano tones in my past auditions. We played 2 percussion tracks in RR's Dafos and it was spectacular in terms of dynamic contrasts and soundstaging capabilities. Again, I had to tell myself I had never thought any Martin Logans would have sounded like that. I suggested to Tasos that what I was hearing was a product of his many many hours of painstaking work in his mods (and expensive parts too) and he agreed. Wider bandwith and lesser distortion throughout the frequency ranges. It was a quick 2 hours of pure listening and I had to beg off to do some last minute shopping and Tasos brought me back again to the T station. Thanks very much for welcoming me into your home in Boston. It was a very nice experience.

Steve Williams · Oct 24, 2016

Terrific that you connected with Tasos, Phil and got to hear his great system.

I am hoping to visit Boston in the near future and if so the Boston Boys are at the top of my list
ack
PeterA
Al. M
Mad Floyd

jadis · Oct 24, 2016

Steve Williams said:
Terrific that you connected with Tasos, Phil and got to hear his great system.

I am hoping to visit Boston in the near future and if so the Boston Boys are at the top of my list
ack
PeterA
Al. M
Mad Floyd

Thanks to you, Steve, I'm so glad to have met a What's Best Forum member in this visit to Boston. And I certainly will plan a LA trip to visit you and Cathy in the future.

Steve Williams · Oct 24, 2016

i'm looking forward to it Phil

ack · Oct 24, 2016

Hi Phil,

thanks for coming over and for your kind words! One of the reasons I love this hobby is the intelligent and sophisticated people it attracts and eventually brings together. I now perfectly understand why Steve is so thrilled to have connected with the Manila group - and so am I!

Steve, I hope you get a chance to visit us here and would love to host you. I also hear the Celtics are better than the Lakers

Steve Williams · Oct 24, 2016

ack said:
Hi Phil,

thanks for coming over and for your kind words! One of the reasons I love this hobby is the intelligent and sophisticated people it attracts and eventually brings together. I now perfectly understand why Steve is so thrilled to have connected with the Manila group - and so am I!

Steve, I hope you get a chance to visit us here and would love to host you. I also hear the Celtics are better than the Lakers

I plan on it Tasos

Now as far as the Lakers and Celtics I can't expect miracles from the Lakers this year but they are a year behind the Celts

ack · Oct 24, 2016

BTW, Phil asked me how I feel about driving Spectral amps by non-Spectral preamps. My short answer was that they are current-driven, so they need a proper preamp. Aside from that, the preamp offers protection for upstream DC and oscillation - and I have, in fact, triggered that protection with the Pass XP-25 a number of times, until I was able to tame it (the Pass was sent back for excessive DC-offset and channel imbalance in the first two weeks, so I suspect subsequent protection triggers might have been oscillation, until the point I was able to get it to behave). So my final answer was "why fight it" - the 30SV, especially, sounds extremely good anyway. Phil also said Sam's (mullard88) Spectral amps don't quite sound the same w/o a Spectral preamp in the chain...

MadFloyd · Oct 24, 2016

Glad you got to hear Tasos' system, Phil. I hope the rest of your weekend and visit was as exciting!

Al M. · Oct 24, 2016

jadis said:
Last week I was in Boston for the first time in my life and I had a wonderful opportunity to meet a fellow member from WBF in the person of Tasos. Since I do not know anybody in the area, I asked Steve to help me find some members here. There were a couple more guys whom I messaged with in the persons of PeterA and Madfloyd but they live in the suburbs and I would have a difficult time reaching them since I rely only on the T. Tasos was very kind to pick me up at a T station near him, and on we went to his house with a very neat system as pictured here in these pages. I must say I have never met a more serious tweaker and modifier of audio equipments than Tasos. He showed me where he did his modifications, from the Martin Logan crossovers, to cables, to speaker terminals, to copper film shielding of his phono cables, and that only thing he did not modify in his system are the Spectral electronics. My listening impression after some choice cuts of classical, vocals, percussion Lps was that I've never heard any Martin Logan based system sound as clear, transparent, and dynamic as this in the past. Instruments are very clear, and as clear as can be without getting etched or to the cutting glass level. Piano attacks in the 45rpm Appassionata were incredibly dynamic and I had know Spectral electronics to produce excellent piano tones in my past auditions. We played 2 percussion tracks in RR's Dafos and it was spectacular in terms of dynamic contrasts and soundstaging capabilities. Again, I had to tell myself I had never thought any Martin Logans would have sounded like that. I suggested to Tasos that what I was hearing was a product of his many many hours of painstaking work in his mods (and expensive parts too) and he agreed. Wider bandwith and lesser distortion throughout the frequency ranges. It was a quick 2 hours of pure listening and I had to beg off to do some last minute shopping and Tasos brought me back again to the T station. Thanks very much for welcoming me into your home in Boston. It was a very nice experience.

Yes, Tasos' system sounds very transparent and dynamic. I find the integration of woofer with panel remarkable, an impressive accomplishment by Tasos.

Al M. · Oct 24, 2016

Steve Williams said:
Terrific that you connected with Tasos, Phil and got to hear his great system.

I am hoping to visit Boston in the near future and if so the Boston Boys are at the top of my list
ack
PeterA
Al. M
Mad Floyd

Great to hear you want to come our way, Steve!

jadis · Oct 24, 2016

MadFloyd said:
Glad you got to hear Tasos' system, Phil. I hope the rest of your weekend and visit was as exciting!

Indeed it was, MadFloyd. Audio and basketball are my 2 favorite hobbies and I went to watch the Celtics on their home court which was a realization of a long time dream and being able to listen to Tasos' system as a big bonus.

Boston is such a uniquely beautiful city in the US. And I'm so glad I came in the Fall season and get to see the leaves falling and changing colors. The historical buildings were very interesting too as I took the Duck Tours which I greatly enjoyed. A first for me to be able to tour a city via land and water! And the lobster and the clam chowder soup, if not for my fear of allergies, I would have eaten lobster more often, but I did order the chowder three times during the week.

ack · Nov 30, 2016

Nothing new, but time to discuss my latest mods elsewhere, here:

1) Magnetic stabilization of my unipivot arm http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...m-with-magnets&p=421463&viewfull=1#post421463

Benefits: azimuth-drift immunity, otherwise caused by the force of the wires sticking out of the armwand; image stabilization; very tight bass; more accurate timbre; theoretically, less VTF fluctuation; theoretically, less mechanical noise

2) The most effective sonic improvement yet in my Alpha DAC: lowering of the low-pass filter corner frequency in the output section from ~2MHz to ~193kHz, with a Vishay 1839 10nF in parallel with C185 (which can now be removed, actually, for a 200kHz cutoff) and its mirror in the other channel http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...y-calculations&p=422258&viewfull=1#post422258

The impetus behind this mod was a little odd, if not awkward, and started with what I've been saying for years, that the Alpha DAC can't really drive the Spectral amps directly (and by that I mean the sound is not right; that, despite the fact the Alpha DAC was developed by driving Spectral DMA-360 amps directly). I have also said a number of times that driving them directly runs them hotter, probably due to high frequency oscillation possibly caused by the DAC, and regardless of the use of MIT cables.

By looking at the DAC's circuit board and measuring the indicated area's components, we determined that there is a low-pass RC filter (R245/C185) in the DAC's analog output section with a corner frequency around 2MHz, to trap intrinsic high-frequency noise in the DAC. So the thinking was that the corner frequency is too high for the very wide bandwidth Spectral preamp and amps, which operate in the megahertz. The suspicion was that this is causing undue audible distortion, and only by attempting to remove noise I cannot hear was there any hope it would work.

Well, not only did it work, but the improvement is quite astounding, but... [there is always a 'but']... I still didn't know if the improvement is due to the better capacitor, or the actual lowering of the corner frequency, or both - one would need to try different quality caps to be sure. Nonetheless, the noise drop was so damn obvious that, when I played my Mahler #2, the fidelity of the sound is so much closer to my analog's now (of the same BSO/Philips recording I have mentioned a number of times). Things like the clarity of the flute and strings popped up quickly; the presentation is much more crisper and vivid, etc, etc...

The next question is, will everyone benefit from this mod??? I am not sure that it would have any effect on equipment that is not inherently wide bandwidth. At any rate, the Vishay is available from Newark as part #53M8351/manf part #MKP1839310404, and the mod requires only good soldering skills (gotta get that shiny solder shown in the picture).

MadFloyd · Nov 30, 2016

Wow, sounds like a really worthwhile upgrade, Tasos - congrats!

ack · Dec 4, 2016

MadFloyd said:
Wow, sounds like a really worthwhile upgrade, Tasos - congrats!

Ian, I've been in suspended disbelief - such clarity, presence, vividness and increase in dynamic headroom... so much so that I had to prove to myself that is true and not expectation bias. So having modified only the single-ended outputs that I use, and considering that the Alpha DAC's balanced output (which is not modified) features its own output circuitry, effectively double the single-ended's and is symmetrical, I plugged the balanced output into another input in the preamp (using MIT Oracle 50ic everywhere), and did a simple A/B. The difference is so stark that it was still hard to believe, thinking that perhaps the balanced output and/or preamp input's additional circuitry is actually making the balanced-out sound a little softer and more veiled. But no, the balanced-out sound is exactly how I remember the DAC sounding pre-mod.

I will demonstrate this to you guys next time you visit, and I think you will be in disbelief as well. Piano hammer strikes are so vivid, with additional headroom of 0.5 to 1dB, and I am not kidding. I spent $2 on these caps, and I just did not expect this level of improvement; this is a like brand-new DAC and I have been going through my collection all weekend long. I am going to remove both of these caps (mine and stock) and replace them with a 10nF Vishay 1837, which is technically designed for RC filters or so they claim, is the radial version of the 1839, and in a much tighter tolerance of 1%; otherwise the 1837 and 1839 are quite similar. I'll be getting the 1837 from Mouser.

PeterA · Dec 4, 2016

Wow, I can sense your enthusiasm from the post. Congratulations, Ack. I guess you will not be buying a new DAC for a while. So now I'm pretty curious, do you prefer digital or analog these days, and how would you describe their differences in sound?

ack's system - end of round 1

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