The Bigblog!

You're barmy   When playing records this morning the milk for my cornflakes was still microwaving, didn't have to worry that halfway through the record my bacon was going to burn. Mrs. Pony is so much better than me at bacon and eggs.

I don't clean records every 20 minutes myself, maybe that's why they all sound like eggs frying.

Yeah but you do get to eat all of it. I think I feel more envy than sympathy 

Eeyore to at least give it a try

Didn't help with Christopher Robin all the instruction manuals.

I thought a blog entry may be a little overdue, especially as quite a bit is going on in the system. 

Firstly, lets talk room treatment. How do you know when you have too much room treatment? 

Well, i now know the answer.  At present i have 50mm Rockwool panels at the first reflection points, which seem to be enough. Adding any more starts to remove the shimmer in the HF. I have 250mm thick panels directly behind the speakers and very close to the room corners,  so they are kind of like bass traps, but not quite. However, they seem to be really effective. I tried adding some more around the room to see what happens. I put a 50mm panel in front of the marble fireplace and one on the opposite side of the room, but the HF just went flat and dull. 

I had wondered how obvious it would be if i reached the point where i had too much, but It was very obvious. The panels have made a significant difference to the entire system. The panels cost around £100 to build and whilst i haven't done the best work in the world, as an experiment they have proven the value of doing them properly. Next up is a removable diffuser for the window behind my listening position. 

Secondly, DAC's

Oh, woe is me!  Two utterly brilliant DACs and I am still not happy. Oddly, before I got the vinyl up and running again, the digital was far more satisfying. How odd  

I did some reading the other day in regard to digital, and it was written that some DAC filter types rely on the brain to reconstruct some of the information coming out of the speaker. I couldn't think for a second that it was true, but in talking to a few in the know, apparently this isn't news. I was and still am shocked, but then a thought occured..."i wonder if this is why people find digital fatiguing?" 

After all, if your brain is having to work and reconfigure parts of the music due to a specific filter type, doesn't that make sense? I am off down a rabbit hole with this information, so whilst doing that i thought it would be a great idea to perhaps whip the SMPS out of the AQVOX DAC.

The Aqvox is a bit of a gem...no, it's a lot of a gem. Seriously speaking, when i first heard this DAC it reminded me of the Chord Dave. The way it unravelled layer upon layer of information blew me away. It's not perfect, but the curiosity got me wondering if the SMPS was having an influence. I whacked the volume up to full and had a listen whilst nothing played. I could hear noise! Electronic rumblings and sputter sounds in the background! I now HAD to find out if they remained when the SMPS came out, so off to Alan's it went and is now sporting two butt ugly linear power supplies lol. I haven't heard it yet as it's still at Al's, but he tells me the Aqvox is a cracking DAC, and it sounds better to him already. I am looking forward to giving it a listen. 

Tonearms, Cartridges and The Beatles....

After a long wait for the prototype PMAT-1010 MK8SE, it arrived a few months back. FFW a few days later and it was on its way back to Angus for "further development" 

I can't go into what that development was in as much detail as i'd like to, because it appears Angus's IP from the MK6 is now being used for inspiration elsewhere by someone else. However, there are six major upgrades to this tonearm compared to the MK6 and unless you buy one, i ain't telling you Sh#t!

I have had the arm for about a week now, and it has blown my lid a few times, none more so than yesterday when bigbird visited. 

Karl and i had floated the idea of a visit the next time he came to the UK. Yesterday, he made it down for a listen. We've spoken pretty much everyday for a couple of years now (sad isn't lol) and in that time he has put a formidable system together in Oz. SP10 MK2, Ortofon Winfeld Ti or ZYK 4D Omega cart, BBu, BT2, 686 and Wilson Benesch P3.0. Karl is one of the few people who i think has a system that resembles the same sort of direction as mine, and being a younger fella with keen hearing, i was, for once, a bit nervy about what he would make of the system here. Especially with the Etka being compared to the Wilsons from his memory. We all do it, we can't help it. 

We started the session with a bit of LA4. A Jazz LP of extreme quality. Both performance and recording quality. We chatted a little after and the verdict was "the speakers sound a touch warm to me" 

"Oh Sh#t" i thought. 

We listened to a few bits and then i got a delivery. Revolver 50th anniversary LP. At this point, we got to the bit i was looking forward to. He got the Winfeld Ti out. I set it up and we played the A side of Revolver. Holy Mary mother of god...the Ti was utterly heartbreakingly good. That "the speakers are a bit warm" turned into "oh, i thought the speakers were warm, they aren't...it was the cart"

He was spot on. The Lyra adding a touch of richness to the Mid range in comparison. The Winny was extremenly accurate and natural. What a cartridge! Do i regret selling my Winny robbiegong ? I do now. 

Track three "im only slpeeping" a giant yawn leap out of the speakers...we looked at each other, both said " i have never heard that before" and of course we hadn't because it isn't like that in the original George Martin mix, but goddam...the Ti blew my mind for the rest of the session. Lightnin' Hopkins playing acoustic guitar on an analogue Productions pressing of Goin' Away. Wow oh Wow oh Wow. I will be buying that with haste!

The sound quality of the Ti is utterly astounding. 

I eventually asked Karl how he felt my system sounded compared to his at home. I didn't expect him to say the Etka were at the Wilson level, they are massive in comparison...nearly 5ft tall i think? , so scale etc is always going to play a part. Also his room is bigger than mine and has a seriously solid floor,  but he did say that they were close in a lot of ways. Better than his £7k Dynaudio contour 60, but not quite at the Wilsons. When i told him the price, his opinion was the same as mine. You are not going to beat them for anything near that price. I agreed. 

It's been an enjoyable few weeks here with the additions of the Etka, the PMAT1010 MK8SE and the room treatment. Things are finally feeling in the ballpark of where i wanted my system to be for all of these years. The Analogue deserves a Windfeld, so thats where i am heading next, and with the Etka pencilled in for some further enhancements, i think i am going to retire very soon with a system that sings the right notes for me. 

No, I don't think so K.

I don't think a next step is possible in this space I am in, and I think the financial requirement to make that step is beyond me for the time being. Probably long term actually.

Sure, there may be some Bigbottle or Avalon developments over the coming months/years, but the nucleus of this system will remain.

Nucleus....not peripherals

I don't.

A nucleus: the central and most important part of an object, movement, or group, forming the basis for its activity and growth.

You don't build your system around a cartridge or a DAC....the nucleus of a system is the pre, power, TT/Arm, Speakers. The rest is peripheral!

People don't buy a cartridge, then buy a TT to use it on. You don't buy a DAC and then buy a system to listen to it...you build the system and the cart and DAC are the interchangeable items!

"I've just bought a MC Cartridge, but it sounds crap. I'm gonna sell my SP10 and keep buying TT's until i find one the cartridge works with"

Dave, nothing works without anything else....

You all know what i am saying, so lets move on.

It's so disappointing. I wish I had a digital system like Oli's.
Try as I might, I just can't get mine to sound fatiguing.

I've been listening to mine all day and still enjoying it.
Dang, I'm doing something wrong obviously.

Yes, we're in the same boat Jerry, not with one system but with two.  My brother's dac is away at the moment so have the Soekris in the system, mine has the XiangSheng in, and still sounding good.
Maybe when the dCS returns we shall get some of this fatigue.

lol

I've spent shocking amount on my digital, five hundred and fifty quid, including the cable, and I still can't get the fatigue.

It sounds disappointingly perfect.

If I sell it all to some chancer on ebay and buy some boutique crap maybe I can get there? What does the panel think?

Maybe I need to watch some more Hans Beerkhuyzen videos, follow his advice?

It does sound refined. It's a good system.

Again....I didn't say my DAC is fatiguing. I just wondered if the the fatigue that *people* report was due to the possibility of that nugget about the brain having to reconstruct some of the music as a result of a filter.

It was hypothetical.

I regret taking over this forum 😂