American Sound AS-2000 Installations- Far East (Anthony)

I mention it often but the biggest pleasure I receive from producing AS2000 is the new friends I make and the chance to revisit old friends. Because of the AS2000 we take a timeout from our busy lives and have some fun and this trip was exactly that, Great Fun !

This was my first time back to Hong Kong since mid 2000’s and I was looking forward to the visit and it didn’t disappoint. I met Anthony at the airport and we headed straight out to his beautiful home, he’d been waiting too long for this moment to waste time with hotel check-in. When we got there the AS2000 was already assembled on the beautiful Stacore rack, Anthony had sent his cartridges in advance of the trip to set them up in my system so with parameters already figured out the final setup went pretty quick and we could sit back, listen to music and consider the steps for system and room set up.

Anthony’s AS2000 with three SME 3012-Rs, vdH Master Signature, MSL Platinum and SPU Century.



The rest of the system is CH Precision electronics, L1/M1.1/P1 with 4 chassis, that sound great! Speakers are Rockport Cygnus.



By the end if the 2nd day we worked through balancing the room taking out unnecessary acoustic panels and detweaking the equipment in the rack, can you spot the tweaks we added?



Overall the install went like a charm and sonically a great success, if I’m allowed to toot my own horn a bit one my best work and in a relatively tight space that looks impossible on paper. I don’t always get to leave the system where I want it to be. Great working with Anthony! I’ll let him fill in the blanks if he wants to.

david

 

congrats to Anthony (member adyc) for the new AS-2000 and spectacular system.

just WOW!!!

the best of the best.

tweaks we added?

wood blocks under the L1 and M1's above the Stacore's?

looks like maple?

i assume those little silver discs on the floor in front of the amps are the removed stock footers?

 

Thank you David. It is a great pleasure to meet you personally. Indeed, you are a master. When you walked straight to my room, the first thing you said my room is a bit too dead and not natural enough. I always thought my room is quiet and not dead. So I am a bit taken aback. You pointed out the culprit is RPG Modex bass traps. I am a bit surprised because RPG claim that Modex only traps bass and reflects mid and high frequencies. We agreed we will remove the Modex in the second day as we will concentrate on the setup of AS2000. David finished the setup of tonearms and cartridges in the morning. After we had a quick lunch, we start to listen to the system. After a few minutes, David mentioned the bass is not natural. So he started to inspect my system. He noticed that I was using Audience AU 24 SX power cords on CH M1.1. He asked me to remove these power cables and use CC power cables instead. I was already using CC power cables on all front ends. I am a bit skeptical as CC power cable is only 14 AWG. AU 24 SX is 10 AWG. I thought 14 AWG cable is not enough for power hungry power amps. He insisted to put on CC power cables. Indeed, the bass did improve and he is more happy about the sound. Now I am a converted CC power cables fan. I am now using CC in all my equipment. For the rest of the day, we listened to three cartridges. We quickly came to the conclusion that VDH Master is the best of all three.

Second day is detweak day. With some help, we removed 5 out of 9 Modex from my room. We wanted to remove all but some of Modex are in awkward position. I will remove them in the future. After removing 5 Modex, the room is definitely much more lively. David is right about Modex. Actually, I was worried that the room is too lively. David told me that the room is actually more natural. Before that, he felt the room is not natural. Indeed my worries are not well founded. The sound is fantastic. Music is more energetic and dynamic. I thought the detweak is done. I was wrong. He wanted me to remove all the audiophile footers. i was very reluctant. We had some lively discussions on the physics of how these footers work. Finally, we agreed that there is no harm to try. He noticed that I have some wood pieces from the leftover of my wooden furniture lying around. He suggested we use these as footers. The wood is verawood.

https://www.wood-database.com/verawood/

I like this wood a lot. It is one of my favourite hardwoods. The wood is very fragrant because of the oil. It is actually denser than water.

We use John Coltrane's Black Pearl Side A for comparison purposes. Using these wood pieces, John Coltrane tenor sax has more contrast. You can really see his fingerings on his tenor sax. Using audiophile footers, tenor sax sounds like one flat note with much less contrast. Double bass lines are also much clearer. However, I felt that I lost some of the bodies. We decided to put the wood pieces on the power amps as well. Surprise, surprise. The body is back and contrast stays. This is the best sound we achieve in these two days. He is happier with the sound now. Time flied. We wanted to try more detweaking. There was not enough time. I will continue detweaking alone in the future. David suggested to me to put some natural hardwoods in the room.

Over the dinner, we talked a lot. It is fascinating to learn about David's audio journey. I said I wasted too much money on the audiophile cables without achieving anything. We also agreed that most of audiophile tweaks are useless. Actually, he is one step further. He said they are sound killers. I did benefit from David's 30 years audio experience.

Just to be clear, David never sells me any tweaks. He is also rack manufacturer. He did praise my Stacore rack highly. David is a very fair person.

In the third day of his visit in Hong Kong. Howie organised David to visit three mega systems in Hong Kong. This is another story. Howie will be a better person to tell the story.

 

I forgot to mention. I did give David two small trunks of verawood. He will try them under his AS2000. I am looking forward to his experience.

 

Thank you for this wonderful and very interesting report!

Do you use any power conditioning devices? Regenerator? Isolation transformer? Balanced power?

I have to think about the various tweaks I planned to buy that David will only toss anyway.

 

Thank you for this wonderful and very interesting report!

Do you use any power conditioning devices? Regenerator? Isolation transformer? Balanced power?

I have to think about the various tweaks I planned to buy that David will only toss anyway.

I dont't use any power conditioner except I have Equitech 10WQ balanced transformer same as Mike powering the whole system. I did not tell David about this transformer. But he did mention that he did find any issue with my electrical system.

 

Good to know that as long as the tweaks remain invisible they may be safe from elimination.

 

Good to know that as long as the tweaks remain invisible they may be safe from elimination.

I might not like the effects of some of them in some situations but I don't consider isolation transformers, regenerators, dedicated lines, isolated ground rods, etc. tweaks, they're basic fundamentals.

But , had I known about the transformer I might have tried to disconnect it and see what happens! In all honesty the sound was great and nothing else to look for to fix.

david

 

Congratulations to adyc for his incredible system and to David for another wonderful installation. I also noticed a few more tweaks: the turtle on the preamp top, another turtle on the right amp, and what looks like a piece of jade or something on the left amp.

One questions about this verawood pieces: do they make contact directly with the casework, or are they actually under the CH stock footers? I thought CH uses large flat square rubber footers, and those silver round footers in front of the amps look like Stillpoints or something. Could you clarify?

Also, did David spend any time positioning the listening seat and speakers? I appreciate the removal of some room treatment. It can be overdone. Enjoy your transformed system and thank you very much for sharing it with us.

 

those silver round footers in front of the amps look like Stillpoints or something.

yes, something but not Stillpoints

 

Great story. We now have a tres Amigos in Hong Kong version.
Anthony you little devil you

It looks fabulous and I bet it sounds even better

 

Congratulations to adyc for his incredible system and to David for another wonderful installation. I also noticed a few more tweaks: the turtle on the preamp top, another turtle on the right amp, and what looks like a piece of jade or something on the left amp.

One questions about this verawood pieces: do they make contact directly with the casework, or are they actually under the CH stock footers? I thought CH uses large flat square rubber footers, and those silver round footers in front of the amps look like Stillpoints or something. Could you clarify?

Also, did David spend any time positioning the listening seat and speakers? I appreciate the removal of some room treatment. It can be overdone. Enjoy your transformed system and thank you very much for sharing it with us.

Thank you Peter.

These wooden turtles are for decoration only! No claim on sound effect. I did not notice any change in sound by removing them or placing them in other locations.

Verawood pieces are in direct contact with CH rubber footers. CH rubber footers are actually circle rather than square. The silver footers in the photo are Stacore CLD footers.

We simply do not have enough time to play round positioning of speakers. Detweaking already took one day. But David did say the position of the speaker is fine. I did ask him about the toe in. I think he prefers not to toe in the speaker. He said it will take more than one day to position the speaker if no toe in.

 

Thanks Anthony. I thought those turtles were heavier, perhaps stone and were placed on the casework to reduce resonance, like a dampening plate. But of course, David would have gotten rid of them if they diminished the sound quality.

That is a nice collection of cartridges you have. The Master Signature certainly is special.

 

Also, did David spend any time positioning the listening seat and speakers? I appreciate the removal of some room treatment. It can be overdone. Enjoy your transformed system and thank you very much for sharing it with us.

The speakers were well placed already and for me to improve it would have taken a while as Anthony mentioned but the sound was so good that I didn't see the need to mess with it at this time.

david

 

I mention it often but the biggest pleasure I receive from producing AS2000 is the new friends I make and the chance to revisit old friends. Because of the AS2000 we take a timeout from our busy lives and have some fun and this trip was exactly that, Great Fun !

This was my first time back to Hong Kong since mid 2000’s and I was looking forward to the visit and it didn’t disappoint. I met Anthony at the airport and we headed straight out to his beautiful home, he’d been waiting too long for this moment to waste time with hotel check-in. When we got there the AS2000 was already assembled on the beautiful Stacore rack, Anthony had sent his cartridges in advance of the trip to set them up in my system so with parameters already figured out the final setup went pretty quick and we could sit back, listen to music and consider the steps for system and room set up.

Anthony’s AS2000 with three SME 3012-Rs, vdH Master Signature, MSL Platinum and SPU Century.

View attachment 58876

The rest of the system is CH Precision electronics, L1/M1.1/P1 with 4 chassis, that sound great! Speakers are Rockport Cygnus.

View attachment 58877

By the end if the 2nd day we worked through balancing the room taking out unnecessary acoustic panels and detweaking the equipment in the rack, can you spot the tweaks we added?

View attachment 58878

Overall the install went like a charm and sonically a great success, if I’m allowed to toot my own horn a bit one my best work and in a relatively tight space that looks impossible on paper. I don’t always get to leave the system where I want it to be. Great working with Anthony! I’ll let him fill in the blanks if he wants to.

david

Anthony : We envy you!

 

Thank you David. It is a great pleasure to meet you personally. Indeed, you are a master. When you walked straight to my room, the first thing you said my room is a bit too dead and not natural enough. I always thought my room is quiet and not dead. So I am a bit taken aback. You pointed out the culprit is RPG Modex bass traps. I am a bit surprised because RPG claim that Modex only traps bass and reflects mid and high frequencies. We agreed we will remove the Modex in the second day as we will concentrate on the setup of AS2000. David finished the setup of tonearms and cartridges in the morning. After we had a quick lunch, we start to listen to the system. After a few minutes, David mentioned the bass is not natural. So he started to inspect my system. He noticed that I was using Audience AU 24 SX power cords on CH M1.1. He asked me to remove these power cables and use CC power cables instead. I was already using CC power cables on all front ends. I am a bit skeptical as CC power cable is only 14 AWG. AU 24 SX is 10 AWG. I thought 14 AWG cable is not enough for power hungry power amps. He insisted to put on CC power cables. Indeed, the bass did improve and he is more happy about the sound. Now I am a converted CC power cables fan. I am now using CC in all my equipment. For the rest of the day, we listened to three cartridges. We quickly came to the conclusion that VDH Master is the best of all three.

Second day is detweak day. With some help, we removed 5 out of 9 Modex from my room. We wanted to remove all but some of Modex are in awkward position. I will remove them in the future. After removing 5 Modex, the room is definitely much more lively. David is right about Modex. Actually, I was worried that the room is too lively. David told me that the room is actually more natural. Before that, he felt the room is not natural. Indeed my worries are not well founded. The sound is fantastic. Music is more energetic and dynamic. I thought the detweak is done. I was wrong. He wanted me to remove all the audiophile footers. i was very reluctant. We had some lively discussions on the physics of how these footers work. Finally, we agreed that there is no harm to try. He noticed that I have some wood pieces from the leftover of my wooden furniture lying around. He suggested we use these as footers. The wood is verawood.

https://www.wood-database.com/verawood/

I like this wood a lot. It is one of my favourite hardwoods. The wood is very fragrant because of the oil. It is actually denser than water.

We use John Coltrane's Black Pearl Side A for comparison purposes. Using these wood pieces, John Coltrane tenor sax has more contrast. You can really see his fingerings on his tenor sax. Using audiophile footers, tenor sax sounds like one flat note with much less contrast. Double bass lines are also much clearer. However, I felt that I lost some of the bodies. We decided to put the wood pieces on the power amps as well. Surprise, surprise. The body is back and contrast stays. This is the best sound we achieve in these two days. He is happier with the sound now. Time flied. We wanted to try more detweaking. There was not enough time. I will continue detweaking alone in the future. David suggested to me to put some natural hardwoods in the room.

Over the dinner, we talked a lot. It is fascinating to learn about David's audio journey. I said I wasted too much money on the audiophile cables without achieving anything. We also agreed that most of audiophile tweaks are useless. Actually, he is one step further. He said they are sound killers. I did benefit from David's 30 years audio experience.

Just to be clear, David never sells me any tweaks. He is also rack manufacturer. He did praise my Stacore rack highly. David is a very fair person.

In the third day of his visit in Hong Kong. Howie organised David to visit three mega systems in Hong Kong. This is another story. Howie will be a better person to tell the story.

I hope you had time to go through with him on setting vta. It is the most valuable thing anyone ever gave me in audio.

Kind regards,
Tang

 

Hi Tang,

Yes. This is the first lesson he gave me on setting up on the table.

 

Anthony, good thing David approved of the Stacore. Can you imagine the effort needed if you wanted to eliminate it Lol.

 

Wonderful set up Anthony, congratulations! We are proud to be a part of your room!

Thank you,

 

I said I wasted too much money on the audiophile cables without achieving anything. We also agreed that most of audiophile tweaks are useless.

Exactly that! Good looking stuff though. Congrats on the 'table.