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Post by misterc on Apr 3, 2022 17:58:45 GMT
Thought it was about time I spent some time catching up with the Coherent blog, In the last six weeks we have been extremely busy and time has just flown by its quite ridiculous. I mean it’s April now? Well; there have been a few changes that have happened in the last six weeks, I would like to introduce you to a couple of those changes, on the bass and vocals in the centre recently joined us from Munich the Wadia 25 taking reality and that being there in the recording space to breath taking level. Right around the room thank you, delivering some of the most integrated, tightest bass and linear sounds I have witnessed from any floor standing speakers in quite a few decades the Tad E1-tx speakers. There have been a couple of minor upgrades to the second stage on the mains conditioner just to bring the 240Vac side that feeds the clocks to match the dac/pre/streaming transport level of power filtration. The Wadia 15i is now residing proudly in a rather special system in Northampton, so it was time to look for a suitable replacement. A W25 (later model) was sourced from a that rather great area of southern Germany home to amazing beer/people/culture and scenery plus some odd audio show as well Munich. A deal was struck and the W25 arrived a coupled of weeks later after a diversion via Lisbon.
The actually unit arrived in the original box with all paperwork and accessories, the dac itself really was in superb condition. Previous owners had lavish care and attention on this one for sure. So after a three-day warm period in the lab I took a full suite of measurements before any soldering iron was swung in anger at this dac so a good bench mark was ascertained. I spent a further 7days with this dac in the system to gain (remember) an intimate knowledge of how this Wadia rolls. Boy does it Rock ‘n’ Roll it’s got more groove than mid 90’s Hacienda frequenter throw back on speed cut with Scopolamine around 4 am on a damp Sunday morning outside the Kebab van.
The W25 has a wonderfully natural mid-range texture and presence coupled with a rock tight rhythmic section and bass that just so articulate and ‘chewy’ One of the observations of old was they could be darker sounding and so comments felt a touch dry? I can understand the darker comment, but dry humm. compared to say naim/Ayre/Exposure/Soulution its positively dripping with peachy three dimensionality. Wadia’s 25 dac also have an amazing infectious way with music, it just dares you put one more track on, then blow me Roger Ramjet’s messed with the clock its 3 am. Its not perfect but its pretty close if you are a music lover. So 14 days later all current improvements have been installed and the running in process begins.
From day two you could hear the possibilities were forming in a most agreeable fashion. So the promise of something rather special was in the making. Fast forward another three weeks, and life is just sooooooooooooo musical and really bloody difficult to tear yourself away from the system. The W25’s ability to place you in the recording environment is spooky uncanny, the prowess it demonstrates to taek you right to the heart of the music wit zero fuss, digital artefacts or congestion no matter what the musical programme is staggering good (remember this is a 24-year dac!). It also has the ability to cope with 24/192Khz currently, need to finish off writing the code for the 352.8Khz section yet.
It’s still growing in stature as well. Further upgrades are the installation of two customer Tx’s that will fit neatly inside the large case work, a full Coherent QP psu suit (which I have adapter to fit inside, pretty sure the analogue stage can cope with 120Kuf instead of the usual 300. For those asr type guys on here, the basic s/n reading for this dac was 106db, we are now @ 114dB s/n. ut more importantly is really does sound bloody superb.
The newer interpolation filter will be finished along with some new I/V discrete boards I have been working on and they fit just dandy inside.
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Post by misterc on Apr 3, 2022 18:35:36 GMT
The following week after the W25 evened out, a rather fine pair of new Tad speakers arrived, the E1-Tx medium floor standing models based on the much appreciated and speakers of great repute the Micro Evolution one stand mounts. Now I’m pretty sure most of you are aware of my feelings towards floor standers from the same companies that make rather special stand mounts, usually they feel I know we’ll still another drier or two in there and we can rest on our laurels. While the end result is still very good, they don’t manage to capture that ‘special’ magic a seriously good three-way stand mount has.
Well I’m happy to report that Tad with the E1-Tx Boy did they get their sums spot on and then some. You can tell a great deal of time went into voicing these speakers and its really worth the 350-400 hours of breaking in time these special speakers require.
This is not a pumped up version of the ME-1’s but it’s a proper extension of ALL of the superb qualities that you find in all of Tad speakers, however with the E1-Tx’s its just so right and then a big dose of ‘Oh Yes’
They have a way with bass reproduction I really haven’t listened to before in floor standers. Clarification time, they are many more expensive speakers that have deeper bass, more sheer physical presence due to the number and size of drivers. Other will go louder, other may have just a smidge more detail BUT it’s only a Nats chuff’s more. But none have the utterly stunning bass texture, start stop, and speed , these are seriously fast speakers, even more so than the ME-1’s! Yet they deliver a more relaxed, although absolutely no loss of dynamic contrast what so ever.
They integrate just seamlessly the speakers do the Tad trick of removing themselves form the replay chain with fuss or drama. Tonally the timbre of instruments is right up there with the uber special stock, yet these have more of a subtle rendering with quieter passages. Rhythmically these speakers just redefine the saying ‘It does what it says on the tin’ Imagining is again first class with note separation and spatial acuity again in the very elite class.
They really do not favour any particular genre of music, all the passages get treated with equal aplomb, whether some Joe Satriani going hell for leather on the fretboard, or Hyden’s gently flowing strings as tickling your tympanic membranes. Female vocals (staple audiophile stuff) has a way of really drawing into the whole picture not just the lady’s carefully mastered production values. For those Salisbury aficionados, listening to either the Race by Yellow or the Propeller heads OHSS, these have a stunning ability to recrate very fast and deep bass effortless whatever the BPM! If you can’t tell yet, here’s a clue I quite like them!
The Tad E1-tx has to be a genuinely real world reference that is affordable (in quantify terms it could be an end game speaker over many more that are in soe cases significantly more costly). Right now, with what I am currently listening to, it would take the CR-1’s (which I do own) to knock these off their perch, but then you are talking a whole new set of rules to go with those world class speakers. That is conversation for another day. If you have the chance to listen to a pair that have been correctly set up and matched then please do so, it really will help you discover music like never before. They really are a real-world reference and then some. Foot note as well all know equipment isolation is most beneficial for making your equipment perform to its true potential. I have been trying out a few speaker isolation options of late.
However I have settled on the track Audio Isolation feet using the small domes, I love the Townshend Podiums and they are worth the outlay no question, however on this occasion the Track Audio feet delivered a better all round performance with the E1-Tx’s in my listening space. The Podiums had the most controlled bass here, BUT it was by a very slender amount this was the only place in the frequency spectrum they did. The Trade Audio feet, delivered more openness, delicacy and articulation by a good margin so There they stay.
Usually, I would have Townshends podiums there, but for what ever reason in my listening environment its just wasn’t to be. Of course, every situation is different so I would suggest you try at least a couple solutions before paring with your cash. Well that’s it for now, I have a few weeks of big projects to get my teeth into some of which I will share with you in the coming weeks. Thanks for reading
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Post by macca on Apr 4, 2022 9:07:19 GMT
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Post by ijrussell on Apr 4, 2022 15:05:23 GMT
I had the pleasure of listening to this system for an hour on Thursday. Easily the best digital replay that I've ever heard and probably the best overall irrespective of source. All of the audiophile traits you hope for were there but more important than that, it just played music.
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Post by misterc on Apr 4, 2022 16:04:58 GMT
Hello Ian Nice to catch up again after covid Thank you for the kind words it is appeciated, though your last observation for me is the most prevalent; it just played music  |
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Post by misterc on Apr 16, 2022 13:44:04 GMT
This week has been a real mad house and honet stings aside, lots of work in the lab restructing the whole set up, some new bits of test equipment (just for Simon) plus this rather device will be here possibly next Friday Should come in handy for some upcoming projects. Lets just see how tight those subs are really  Acoustic testing |
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Post by misterc on Apr 21, 2022 17:06:49 GMT
This week again has been silly busy due to that day off on Monday, lab is pretty much sorted now just a couple more bits and pieces like tiding up the flooring and new seating atherwise there.
Oh you put the feelers out for one and nothing is about like a honest Tory in cabinet, then blow me three come along all at once, ladies and gentlemen Wadia number 55 now being benchmarked, ready for some serious internal re-alignment 
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Apr 21, 2022 17:45:05 GMT
This week again has been silly busy due to that day off on Monday, lab is pretty much sorted now just a couple more bits and pieces like tiding up the flooring and new seating atherwise there.
Oh you put the feelers out for one and nothing is about like a honest Tory in cabinet, then blow me three come along all at once, ladies and gentlemen Wadia number 55 now being benchmarked, ready for some serious internal re-alignment
Is there a particular Wadia to look out for Tony? |
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Post by misterc on Apr 22, 2022 9:19:14 GMT
Hello Oli,
If you are starting with the Wadia's then one of these two are a decent place to start the 15 & 26 and these start around 600 for 26 and upto 1600 for the 15, bear in mind that 48Khz (in stock form) is the highest sample rate you can acheive with them.
Just in the processes of hoping securing the 931 & 922 mono dac's so far negotiations are proving a wee bit interesting!
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Apr 22, 2022 17:44:36 GMT
Hello Oli, If you are starting with the Wadia's then one of these two are a decent place to start the 15 & 26 and these start around 600 for 26 and upto 1600 for the 15, bear in mind that 48Khz (in stock form) is the highest sample rate you can acheive with them. Just in the processes of hoping securing the 931 & 922 mono dac's so far negotiations are proving a wee bit interesting! Ok cool. Thanks T |
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Post by misterc on Apr 25, 2022 18:54:34 GMT
I feel I have just found our next prototyping machine, its rather spiffing to. Oh well that the rest of April R&D budget blown
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Post by macca on Apr 25, 2022 20:36:25 GMT
That is pretty flash.
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Post by mayebaza on May 1, 2022 6:56:24 GMT
A very understandable spend 👍🏿
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Post by misterc on May 14, 2022 18:39:45 GMT
Can't believe its half way through May already?  ?? man where does the time go to 
In the last few weeks its been full on in the lab plus some new customer sales and a couple fo returning clients from over 10 years ago.
Have just finished a couple of pairs of our BD balanced interconnects for a customer who has just taken delivery of some rather desriable D'Agostino HD amplification, so to celebrate this we organised having our materials coloured to match his new purchases.
Have squared away enough time to get to grips with the latest Big W's insides in the last couple of weeks which was a bloody challenge in it's self, so have finially reworked the CPU board with some neat power supply improvements and some further vibration isolation. Did spenrt almost a whole day on bringing the second dac board up to Coherent Standard with some judious use of the the rework station and JBC micro tweezers. Space is a real premium with the dac boards and clock arrays' mounted on top of each other whilst also straddling the CPU board. I did also find time to improve the digital input board powerrails and data buffering, so far total time on this 27ix has been 44 hours.
One of the last BIG jobs left is the power supply its self which sits at the bottom of the dac, so to remove this particular large board, all the others have to come out!
This will yeild some rather decent improvements on top of the already rather 'tasty' additions that have been released from this venerable beastie. Some extra cooling has been implimented along with some nifty small circuit board additions to add noise reduction. So far 302 individual components have been removed and replaced. Possibly another 80 or so and the 'Big W 27ix Mr.C V1' will be prancing away into the distance lol
Compared to the stock unit, the stage depth, drive, texture and spatiality are on another plane of existance. Working on the flow, noise floor and easy of sound whichis falling into place now. This is shaping up to be a real killer dac, all the signs are good so its onwards and upwards.
A stock inside shot, not the ones' I am working on forgot to take that image . Don't switch it on, take apart motto here!
The digital input board, cpu, dac one & Clocks + dac two board removed just to gai access to the main power supply board!
All the goodness has now been removed!
The stock second dac board and I/V stage
Some of the components that have now been removed this far.
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Post by sq225917 on May 14, 2022 20:39:20 GMT
Jesus are they mostly tants?
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Post by misterc on May 15, 2022 12:34:46 GMT
Hi Simon
They are some more tants, plus some discrete i/c's and reg's I have replaced the big stuff comes out this week, I have desigend a new IEC filter to fit in that tight (small area to work with) as well after removing the shaffner.
Not easy to improve the clock with out relocating on the flip side of the first dac board, but I have some space a whole 25mm height to play with lol though I havean idea.
Spent sometime in the listeming room after tidying up the back garden, it is starting to come togther well now, I will leave it on album shuffle until Thursday then the major surgery begins, I have been looking at the digi master coding in the last few days, considering this was 20 odd years old and it's firing the data into those 1702's @ 2.82Mhz its still pretty advanced today.
So far really pleased with the results, which is good as I have a couple of customers units to work on!
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Post by sq225917 on May 15, 2022 22:26:04 GMT
That a lot of tants, naim would be proud. Hateful things, always fail short, spectacularly intolerant of any reverse bias, noisy as hell with high ac across them or low dc bias, yuck.
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Post by sq225917 on May 15, 2022 22:27:41 GMT
What's your thought on different xo's T? Are you a fan of any one brand, chasing lowest phase noise or is it all in the overall implementation for you?
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Post by misterc on May 16, 2022 7:50:55 GMT
That a lot of tants, naim would be proud. Hateful things, always fail short, spectacularly intolerant of any reverse bias, noisy as hell with high ac across them or low dc bias, yuck. No arugement from myself on that score Simon, 75% of them have been replaced with non tant ploymer appropriates 
There are couple of places that it's not possible to change that parameter purely due to space constraints, however there are much more advanced designed used with EV applications (ploymer again) that are not to shabby and a vast improvment over the original spec.
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Post by misterc on May 16, 2022 8:21:07 GMT
What's your thought on different xo's T? Are you a fan of any one brand, chasing lowest phase noise or is it all in the overall implementation for you?
This area I have very firm views on as we speciliase in many forms of clock design not just audio, there area couple of much touted clock designs (Crystek being one of them) which have ulra low drift (PPM's in 6th or 7th magnitute) with superb leading edge definition, which in a ideal world is the desrided goal. However having a 'cracking' leading edge often results in a couple of problems 'over shoot or gibbs ears' on the postive dwell portion of the wave form. This also leads to an increase in harmonic content much higher up the frequency ranges and with increased amplitute (very undesirable imho especially with audio) That particular 100Mhz clock was putting quite marked harmonic noise upto and beyond the 25th so well over 2.5Ghz and that was still @ -35dBc!! not a CE pass lol
Not so long ago I replaced a Crystek 575 uber clock square wave oscilliator with a Si equivilent (the spec's you would have skipped over because they were not in the same desirability league) However once fitted the sound improved quite markedly with a significant reduction in harshness, greater spatial awareness and a improved sense of ease to the sound) that was a sign wave output. However in that particular case the issue was the Crystek causing harmonic interaction with other i/c's located with inside the dac.
Personally I look for a more complete TIE (Time Interval Error) picture which is phase noise, however to accurately assess phase noise is not so easy and the equipment involved runs well into 5 possibly 6 figures.
The main control clock in the system runs at -122dBc/Hz with 13.23fs @ 1-100Hz going on to a total of -176dBc/Hz @ 10Mhz far exceeding any atomic clock I have owned, although the half life on Rhobdium is around 50K years so I am not to bothered about that
Here is an older design we looked at a couple of years ago for a customer
Using a quality bench power supply and ground tip probing (the rail probe was on another project at the time) you can clearly see the sign wave output @ 16.934Mhz (44.1Khz sample rate)
So we can look at both gthe time and frequency domains simultaneously so in the first image you can see the full jitter measurement parameters and historgram views
The finial one here is the most telling a full spectral plot plus 3D rendering of the harmonic spurri that the clock produces and this one is acutally (for the set up) quite respectable.
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Post by pete on May 16, 2022 9:25:04 GMT
This looks mighty impressive, haven't a clue what is going on though!  A little beyond my understanding levels, very interesting though. |
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Post by misterc on May 16, 2022 19:22:53 GMT
Its been a long marathon in the lab today a couple of longterm projects needed some time spent on them, plus I had the urge to get to grips withthe Wadia 27ix power supply today
A few capacitors proved to be a little stubbon however its all over bar the shouting
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Post by sq225917 on May 17, 2022 19:16:14 GMT
She's looking good Tony.
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Post by misterc on Jun 2, 2022 19:07:14 GMT
Well its been very hectic in the few weeks here at Coherent central, plus with the delightful bonus of a lightening strike at the end of last week (deep joy  ) so I decided to put some extra protection in the the mains supply and while I was at it installa new full isolated supply to the lab. Plus an oppotunity to really organise the lab into a professional enviroment (insert appropriate term here )
So its been all hands to the pumps in the last 48 hours so fter some gardening and some lindy hop (yes really  ) I can finially say we are now back up to full speed in the lab and kicking off next week with fresh vigour!
When I removed all of the test equipment to facilitate the installation of the new mains supply, just didn't realise exactly how much equipment we have and how long it tales to clean it, test it and re instate it.
Still all completed now 
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Post by antonio on Jun 3, 2022 4:51:36 GMT
You've certainly got some stuff Tony, not only that it must be 110% efficient, it's all being Mutec'd |
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Post by misterc on Jun 6, 2022 12:04:58 GMT
Just finished off a Mutec MC3+usb DC power upgrade, umbilial lead and QP-1 power supply for a customer, thought you would like to see the result.
Before the virgin board.
After the basic DC upgrade has been installed
The upgraded Mutec MC3+usb being benchmarked jitter aspect testing on a Lecroy 12 bit scope.
Actual scope results note use of impedence matched 75Ohm adpater for the 50Ohm scope input so many makethis mistake when measuring consumer digital audio cables, big issue other wise!
Mutec being tested on the R&R UPV66 audio analyser
FFT view of of a 1khz Digital to digital signal passed through the analyser @ -1dbfs -188 dBr at fundemental frequency pretty much on analyser measurement limit (what noise lol)
Intermodulation distortion is again rather low!
The complete upgrade package
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jun 6, 2022 12:21:28 GMT
Lovely. That's what I like to see T.
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Post by antonio on Jun 6, 2022 13:55:38 GMT
Nice works MisterC.
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Post by misterc on Jun 12, 2022 16:24:38 GMT
Another very busy week @ Coherent this week, I know Simon like to see gratuitous circuit board shots  so we will start with those.
One of the more enteraining jobs this week was to perform a full power supply overhaul & upgrade of another Wadia 27ix. This one had a few 'Challenges' with the odd broken track and through hole plating issues! This is where have the correct method of fault finding and testing equipment really makes life less stressful. Here wee can see the PSU being powered up by each individual power rail to enable full power integrity checks and any remedial action taken. This is not a small job and is labour intensive. However the outcome was most successful
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Post by misterc on Jun 12, 2022 16:34:56 GMT
Yesterday afternoon one very lucky gent took delivery of a very special pair of speakers the TAD E1-Tx. We have been using these speakers ourselves in one of our demo rooms for the last 3 months. We have been seriously impressed by the E1-Tx total and utter cohesiveness, linearity, articulation textural renderings and plain old making music sound incredibly enjoyable with the ability to lose many hours lost in music!
After installing and basic first set up of of his new Tad E1-Tx speakers. Gent is a very capable multi instrumentalist musician and was serious bowled over by their ability to take you to the real heart of the music. Having owned many high quality speakers in the past he was really blown away with the total ability to make engaging involving music sound effortless. One very happy new Tad owner.
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?? man where does the time go to 
A little beyond my understanding levels, very interesting though.
) so I decided to put some extra protection in the the mains supply and while I was at it installa new full isolated supply to the lab. Plus an oppotunity to really organise the lab into a professional enviroment (insert appropriate term here 
) I can finially say we are now back up to full speed in the lab and kicking off next week with fresh vigour!
so we will start with those.
